In an email in March, Canada head coach Bev Priestman said spying was « the difference between winning and losing. » The team is now playing without her on its quest for a second straight Olympic gold.
The Canadian women’s soccer team advanced to the quarterfinals of the Summer Olympic Games soon after FIFA publicly released a damning email exchange between the team’s suspended head coach, Beverly Priestman, and an unnamed employee who objected to spying.
Canada is defending the Olympic gold medal its women’s team won at the Tokyo Games in 2021. And they are doing so without Priestman at the helm, after an email from March demonstrated her knowledge of and commitment to the practice.
The emails released Wednesday by FIFA were included as part of a formal dismissal of Canada’s appeal of a six-point penalty levied by the federation on the Olympic team as punishment for the spying. FIFA also upheld a fine of about $228,000 on the Canadian Soccer Association.
In March, after Canada’s Olympic opponents were announced, an unnamed employee of the Canadian women’s team, a performance analyst, emailed Priestman to follow up about a conversation between the two about preparations for the tournament.
« As discussed yesterday, in terms of the ‘spying’ conversation, I came off the meeting with clarity that you understood my reasons for me being unwilling to do this moving forward », the employee wrote.
