PARIS-. The FIFA He discounted six points from Canada in the women’s soccer tournament of the Olympic Games and banned three coaches for a year on Saturday following a drone spying scandal.
The surprise series of punishments includes a 200,000 Swiss franc ($226,000) fine for the Canadian Soccer Federation in a scandal that erupted during the Games. Two assistants were caught spying on New Zealand’s training session on Wednesday, their opponent in the opening game of the tournament, with drones.
Coach Bev Priestman, who led the team to the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, had already been suspended by her federation and was subsequently removed from the Olympic tournament.
Priestman and his two assistants implicated in the case, Joseph Lombardi and Jasmine Mander, were banned from all football activities for one year.
FIFA accelerated the disciplinary process by asking its appeal judges to take over the case.
Judges from world football’s governing body found Priestman and two of his assistants “each responsible for offensive behaviour and breaching the principles of fair play.”
Priestman and the Canadian federation could appeal the ban to the special Olympic panel in Paris at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
