'Spygate' continues! Canada suspends head coach Bev Priestman during Olympic title defense as report suggests 2020 gold medallist has tried to film opponents' sessions 'for years'

Ahead of Canada's opening game at the Olympic women's football tournament, opponents New Zealand placed a complaint after seeing a drone flying over its training session. Another incident soon came to light and the Canada Olympic Committee offered an apology before sending home the two staff involved. Priestman also removed herself from the touchline for Thursday's match, which finished 2-1 to Canada.

However, just hours after that result, a damaging report from TSN in Canada was published. It alleges that Canada's men's and women's soccer teams have 'engaged for years in efforts to film the closed-door training sessions of their opponents, including during the women's gold-medal winning Olympic tournament in 2021'.

In the report, details of an incident before a match against Panama in July 2022 are disclosed, which led to the Panamanian Football Federation complaining to Canada Soccer and CONCACAF. Another instance involved Canada filming two of Japan's closed-door training sessions before the two teams met at Tokyo 2020, the Games at which Canada won Olympic gold.

TSN also wrote that, according to a source, when a Canada Soccer contractor, who was scheduled to travel to the 2023 Women's World Cup, was told their responsibilities would include trying to record training sessions of opposing teams and they refused, their trip was canceled.

"In a couple of scenarios, people have been pushed and have been told, ‘You have to give 110 percent and this is part of the job so if you don’t feel comfortable with doing this, you do not have a place on the team',” one of the sources said in the report. "It’s not something that’s talked about and it’s not something there are a lot of text messages about because of how sensitive this is. Some of the people who have had to do the filming or review the filming have said to a few staff members how uncomfortable it was for them."

Shortly after TSN's story was published, Canada Soccer announced that Priestman had been removed from the Olympic team and suspended. Assistant coach Andy Spence will lead the side for the remainder of the Games.

"Over the past 24 hours, additional information has come to our attention regarding previous drone use against opponents, predating the Paris 2024 Olympic Games," Kevin Blue, CEO and general secretary of Canada Soccer, said in a statement. "In light of these new revelations, Canada Soccer has made the decision to suspend women's national soccer team head coach Bev Priestman for the remainder of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and until the completion of our recently announced independent external review.”

"I learned that there was an incident. I learned that, again, the fact pattern in that specific incident is different, as far as I understand it today, from what has occurred here, in the sense that the potential impact on the competitive integrity of a match was not at risk in that incident. I will learn more about the totality of this as we dig into it through the formal process," Blue said.

"He was aware of it after the fact, at a minimum, and, again, through the process here, we're going to have further analysis and review about the extent of everybody's knowledge of it," Blue said.

These events leave the 2020 gold medallist in disarray ahead of its Olympic title defense continuing on Sunday, against host nation France. Canada will conclude the group stage on July 31 in a match with Colombia.