The scandal surrounding Canada’s national women’s soccer team took a turn Monday when the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canada Soccer announced an appeal of FIFA’s six-point penalty.
FIFA docked Team Canada on Saturday after a team analyst was caught using a drone to spy on the New Zealand team’s practice before competition began. Canada Soccer was also fined and three coaching staff members have been suspended for one year.
A ruling could come as early as Wednesday, before Canada faces Colombia.
But how is all of this affecting the players?
CTV News Ottawa’s Patricia Boal spoke to Drew Beckie, Atlético Ottawa’s head of development, on CTV News at Six to discuss the pressure players might be under, not only playing on the world stage, but also under the shadow of a scandal. Beckie’s sister, Janine Beckie, is on the national women’s soccer team.
The interview below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Patricia Boal: It has certainly been the focal point in the early days of the Olympics and then we learned about the appeal, coming after that six-point deduction, which really put this Canadian team into a bind, in terms of moving on… How are they doing, do you think, mentally around all that?
Drew Beckie: Obviously, a lot they’re dealing with… We understand that. As a player, you have to try and focus on just what you can control. There’s so many things that are out of their control. They did it [Sunday]; they won. Sitting on zero points now, but they put themselves in the position that they could go through, regardless of what happens, they’re just focusing on what they can control and that’s the results on the field.
Boal: Have you had a chance to talk to your sister about some of what she was feeling as they were hearing about the developments?
Beckie: A bit. I kind of let her reach out to me when she’s feeling up to it. I tried to focus her in on, “This is your third Olympics. It may be your last. So, why put your time and energy into something that you can’t control?”
Boal: I think that’s part of it that’s really tough. Being a veteran and coming off the success they had in 2021 and actually being the gold medallist coming into this, it should have been such a positive moment. Instead, not only is it potentially derailing what they have going on this year, it’s also potentially tarnishing some of what they accomplished; they have to tune out a lot of that chatter.
Beckie: I believe us, as Canadians, we put a lot of emphasis on how we’re visibly seen in the world. And that has an effect on the players, too. They’re representing us as a country; they’re representing us as a people. When these accusations and proven stuff has come out about that, it tarnishes what has happened in the past. We don’t know the connections between everything at the moment, but again, as players, your job is to go out there and win and up to this point, they’re doing that.
Boal: Is soccer kind of a dirty sport, internationally, do you think?
Beckie: That’s a great question. I think there’s a lot of people that are trying to gain an edge, for sure. You could talk about performance-enhancing drugs. You could talk about drones. You could talk about all kinds of things. That’s always going to be the case in any kind of sport. If we’re talking specifically international soccer, I would hope it’s clean, for the most part. There’s a lot of money in this game, to get that edge, but I like to be an optimist and think that the players are playing clean and the coaches and staff are playing clean.
Boal: We heard all these players come out who were on the previous team saying we never looked at drone footage. It’s almost hard to understand what the edge even would be in that situation. I understand it in the game of football, on the American side, NFL football, what they might be looking for. It seems a little trickier to even wrap your mind around.
Beckie: That’s a very good point. The little things you may get from drone footage have very little impact, I feel, in how the game is played. It’s mano versus mano. You’re going after each other on the field and to understand the system a team is going to play or a setpiece, maybe, but the means don’t justify the ends.
Boal: If they are able to make it through here with a win or maybe that appeal comes through and they don’t end up needing that win against Colombia, and they move on, will you be even more proud of what your sister has accomplished, given that she was able to, along with her teammates, maintain that razor focus in the face of this kind of distraction?
Beckie: Definitely. It’s a tremendous achievement up to this point. Even if they didn’t go on, even if they didn’t win [Sunday], to be able to go out on the field and show themselves that well, it just makes it even better, seeing the victory.
Boal: Who’s the better soccer player between the two of you?
Beckie: (laughs) We’ve been talking about that for 30 years. I’ll give her the edge right now, because I’m retired.
–With files from The Canadian Press