| Canadians are very good at saying sorry. There is perhaps something, deep in the national psyche, of a Britishness there, and maybe also for the need to separate themselves from Americans, who are much more likely to adopt the John Wayne school of thought: “Never apologise, mister, it’s a sign of weakness.” Such is the rate at which Canadians are inclined to apologise that the province of Ontario even introduced the Apology Act in 2009, a law created as a measure to give lawyers a fair chance defending clients who were never guilty but apologised to the aggrieved all the same, stipulating that apologies do not necessarily constitute an admission of guilt. Of course, that’s not to say that Canadians are always innocent. Just ask their women’s soccer team, who took the Olympic motto of “faster, higher, stronger” a little too literally on the eve of their opening match at Paris 2024, after being caught red-handed flying a drone to record two separate training sessions of their opponents, New Zealand, before Thursday’s curtain raiser. New Zealand’s Olympic Committee “immediately reported the incident to police, leading to the drone operator, who has been identified as a support staff member of the wider Canadian Women’s football team, to be detained”, who has since been named as Joseph Lombardi, “an unaccredited analyst”. Despite only saying sorry when they were caught, rather than voluntarily getting out in front of the story, Canada went full Leslie Knope, issuing two separate statements with all the sincerity and fervour of a deputy director of the parks and recreation department being caught with one hand in the gift basket. “Heartfelt apologies” have been issued to New Zealand, Lombardi and Jasmine Mander, “an assistant coach to whom Mr Lombardi reports to”, has been sent home, while Bev Priestman, Canada’s head coach, has voluntarily withdrawn herself from coaching the match on Thursday as “a commitment to integrity and accountability”, although she will remain in France for the rest of the Olympics. Just how New Zealand found, detained and identified the operator and drone as Canadian remain unexplained, with reports that Lombardi was stood on the side of the training pitch wearing a red-and-white tracksuit, eating poutine and singing ‘My Spying Will Go On’ to the tune of Céline Dion’s greatest hit said to be wide of the mark. This is all quite the contrast to football’s last Spygate, when a member of Marcelo Bielsa’s backroom staff at Leeds, equipped with pliers, binoculars and disguised clothing, was found outside Derby County’s training ground in 2019. Not only did Bielsa do his best Larry David impression in squirming out of a sincere apology, he admitted in an extraordinary 70-minute press conference to the world’s media, supported by a PowerPoint presentation and reams of tactical evidence, that he had “observed all the rivals we played against and watched the training sessions of all opponents”. So while New Zealand do have legitimate grievances, maybe they should just be grateful that they got an apology at all. | 