baggers44 so you’re not a Leeds fan I take it?! 😄
So the drama continues… Canada head coach Bev Priestman, one of her assistants and another team staffer (who was apparently caught flying the drone) have all been sent home and banned from football for a year by FIFA. FIFA fined Canada Soccer about $330,000 and the women’s team was docked 6 points - which makes their defending their reigning gold medal unlikely. Furthermore, Canada’s minister of sport has revoked a bunch of funding to Canada Soccer and has publically stated that our federation has a long-standing “ethics problem”.
Canada Soccer are launching an independent investigation and I’m sure more heads are about to roll. This is all very bad stuff because Canada Soccer has gone through the ringer in the national press relating to men’s and women’s pay equity and a bad business deal to an entity called Canada Soccer Business. CSB is a group controlled by the owners of the new-ish professional Canadian Premier League - which was spun up as a stipulation to Canada getting the 2026 World Cup. Previous to the CPL, Canada only had regional semi-professional leagues and the three MLS teams. That deal signed away ALL of their profit-sharing opportunities in return for a yearly lump sum payment that is a pittance of what they’d be getting now due to their recent success. Canada Soccer is so broke from that deal that when they hired Jesse Marsch, they had to dip into funds from all three Canadian MLS teams to help pay his salary. It’s gone from bad to apocalyptic.
To top it off, former CMNWT and CMNT head coach John Herdman (who’s now thr manager at Toronto FC) - the likely culprit behind this culture of ‘cheating’ by flying drones over opponents practices - has stayed mum about his involvement. He was hammered with questions about the scandal on MLS media day on Friday, and he came back with comments along the lines of, ’I’ll happily participate in any investigation Canada Soccer has if they want me to do so. During my team with both the men’s and women’s national teams I always kept ethics to the highest of standards in how we played and practices. Until there’s an investigation from Canada Soccer, it’s inappropriate for me to comment further other since I’m no longer with the organization.'. In short, saying he won’t say shit unless he’s subpoenaed to do so.
The sad thing is that multiple women’s players like all-time scoring leader across women’s and men’s football and GOAT, Christine Sinclair, have had to make statements saying they’ve never seen opponents’ drone footage from practices and that their efforts on the pitch were down to hard work and practice. I feel awful for the current and past women’s team players. They’re paying the price for a couple of absolute numpties when they weren’t involved in any way.
