Olympics
6 months ago
Scotty's Spin: Why FIFA's points deduction against Canada Soccer should stand
By Scotty Stevenson
Canada Soccer has formally decided to appeal the decision handed down by FIFA to dock the Canadian women's football team six points in the 2024 Olympic tournament in Paris.
Just for reference, they've already erased that deficit with wins over New Zealand and France. They currently have zero points in their pool, three points adrift of the two pool leaders Colombia and France, with a chance still of making it through to the knockout rounds.
According to the Canadian Soccer Association, the appeal is based on "the disproportionality of the sanction, which we believe unfairly punishes the athletes for actions they had no part in, and goes far beyond restoring fairness to the match against New Zealand."
It may be the case that those athletes knew nothing of the spying, which we now know was not just about the New Zealand side. It now has been called into question as part of a systemic approach to coaching and managing this Canadian team.
The investigations continue - it has temporarily cost head coach Bev Priestman and two assistants their jobs. Joseph Lombardi, the analyst who was flying the drone over New Zealand's training, was handed down an eight months suspended sentence by French authorities. All of those coaches have been banned for a year by FIFA.
A six-point deduction? New Zealand gets nothing out of this after having been spied on and who knows what information was revealed to the Canadian coaching staff through that act.
New Zealand gets no redress here.
Canada appealing this sanction shows their desperation, and I would put to you that to say that players didn't know what was going on is a stretch. It has to be a stretch. Either that, or they had the most amazing confidence in their coaching staff who could take footage. And even if they hadn't shown that footage to the players, know exactly what opposition teams would be doing on the field.
There's good coaching and then there's coaches who have got their information through foul means fell, and this was that - flying drones over other teams. Spying on other teams is not part and parcel of what the game is supposed to be about.
The athletes, are they being punished here? Yes, they are. But other instances of systemic cheating has seen athletes punished and have seen athletes banned.
The Canadian women's football team has not been banned from the Olympics, only the coaches. The points deduction, in my opinion, is fair and should stand.
This will go in front of the Court of Arbitration for Sport who have an ad hoc court at the Olympic Games. We will expect a decision sometime in the next 48 hours - I hope that they back FIFA here.
I hope that they do not overturn that sanction. For the life of me, I cannot believe that the Canadian women's football team is still in this tournament and still with a chance to get into the medal rounds.
To me, they should only be there now making up numbers. That may seem unfair on the athletes, but those athletes are part of a system, and that system has been found to be dirty. Tough bikkies.
