Whitecaps vs. Toronto FC: No one droning on about spying as Canadian championship nears

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CANADIAN CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL

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Toronto FC vs. Vancouver Whitecaps

Wednesday, 7 p.m., B.C. Place

The first rule of Flight Club is you don’t talk about Flight Club.

Those are the rules of engagement issued to the current Canadian National Team members — both men’s and women’s — regarding questions about the drone scandal that has domestic soccer fans clutching their pearls while being met with a collective shrug by the international community.

When men’s team head coach Jesse Marsch visited at the start of the month, along with new Canadian Soccer Association president Peter Augruso and CEO Kevin Blue, media were directed expressly not ask any questions about drones. Not that it would have got any answers; the ongoing investigation independent of FIFA and the CSA means we would have got “no comment” in about 40 different phrasings.

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Christine Sinclair offered up a few non-controversial thoughts on the matter, but as the national legend is now retired from international play, there’s no risk of blowback. The national team players on the Vancouver Whitecaps have also been mum, declining to talk on the subject, citing the ongoing investigation, which is being spearheaded by Sonia Regenbogen of the law firm Mathews, Dinsdale & Clark.

When Team Canada’s Joseph Lombardi was nabbed by French police for his aerial espionage in the airspace over New Zealand’s women’s soccer team during the Summer Olympics in Paris this summer, the dominoes quickly began to fall.

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Lombardi was sent home after his release. Assistant coach Jasmine Mander was discovered to have text messages on her phone indicating she knew about the spying, and the Surrey native was also dispatched home from France.

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The team was issued a six-point penalty in group play, seemingly a death blow to their Olympic medal aspirations, but they clutched up with three straight wins to advance to the knockout stage, where they ultimately lost in penalty kicks to German.

Head coach Bev Priestman had voluntarily stepped aside when the revelations were made, but was removed as Canada’s gaffer, suspended by the CSA, and later banned from all soccer-related activities for one year — as were Mander and Lombardi.

The consequences were swift and heavy for all involved.

Everyone, that is, except for the architect of the entire drone spying system, former national team coach and current Toronto FC boss John Herdman. The CSA itself fingered its former men’s and women’s head coach as the originator of the spying practice.

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TSN also linked Herdman to several incidents of similar sports espionage in international play, and even as recently as this summer domestically, when a drone was spotted flying over Forge FC’s practice as they prepared to face Toronto in the Canadian Championships.

Herdman said at the time he was shocked by the reports and was “highly confident” neither he nor his staff would ever be involved in such a thing. And now, of course, he cannot comment because of the ongoing investigation into Flight Club.

The reports first surfaced while TFC was in the middle of what would be a nine-game winless streak (0-7-2), and some insiders thought it might make a credible enough excuse for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to part ways with Herdman. He’d been heralded as The Man to turn around TFC’s slumping fortunes, having missed the playoffs and finishing near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings the past three years running.

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He’s 17-23-3 since taking over the club in October 2023 — one with the league’s third-highest payroll, mind you — and the Reds are currently treading water in the eighth-place playoff play-in spot in the East, with five of the teams just behind them holding a game in hand.

Now he arrives back in B.C. for the Canadian Championship final against the Vancouver Whitecaps (Wednesday, 7 p.m., B.C. Place) with the double barrels of federation and FIFA, and pro team results both being levelled at him.

TFC’s management is also mum on the whole affair, declining to say much until the final shoe drops.

Toronto is the all-time leader in Voyageurs Cup wins with eight, but has been skunked by the Caps twice and Montreal once in the past three years, coinciding with the team’s downturn in fortunes.

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Since Greg Vanney resigned as coach in December 2020, there have been five coaches — both interim and, um, permanent — in that span. Parting ways with Herdman might not be the best course of action for a team struggling to find consistency and championship quality again, but if the team continues circling the drain, it might be necessary.

The Canadian Championship showdown might alleviate some of that pressure if TFC could come out on top with a ninth Cup, but anything damning coming out of the investigation for Herdman might sweep that away.

And massive reputational damage has already been done. This is coach who’d led the women’s teams to heights previously unseen, and manned the con of the men’s team’s remarkable, magical qualifying run to its first World Cup in four decades.

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That’s all tainted now. All that success and respect, gone up in the air like a Mavic Pro.

Not even the varnish on a potential Voyageurs Cup would escape being tarnished.

jadams@postmedia.com

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