Defending champions Canada face elimination from the Olympic women's football tournament on Sunday after world football's governing body Fifa docked the team six points for spying on opponents.
Coach Beverly Priestman, who led them to Olympic glory in Tokyo in 2021, was suspended for a year after some of her staff deployed a drone to peer into New Zealand's training session just before their opening game last Thursday in Saint-Etienne.
Canada won the Group A clash 2-1. But the reduction leaves the side on -3 points ahead of the clash against pacesetters France.
Anything less than a victory over Hervé Renard's team would leave the Canadians struggling to qualify for the last eight as one of the two best third-placed teams from the three pools.
Canada Soccer chief executive Kevin Blue said he had tried to convince Fifa bosses not to punish the team.
"The players themselves have not been involved in any unethical behaviour," Blue said. "And frankly we ask Fifa to take that into consideration if contemplating any further sanctions.
"Specifically we do not feel that a deduction of points in this tournament would be fair to our players."
'Not our values'
Canada's players have protested their innocence. "There was a lot of emotion, frustration and humiliation because as a player, it doesn't reflect our values and what we want to represent as competitors at the Olympics," lamented defender Vanessa Gilles.
"The Games represent fair play. As Canadians, these are not our values or those of our country. We are not cheats."
Analyst Joey Lombardi was ejected from the Canada camp for his part in flying the drone over the New Zealand training session. Assistant Jasmine Mander was also sent home, while Priestman withdrew herself from the game against New Zealand before Canadian football chiefs suspended her.
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Canada Soccer, which runs the country's national football squads, was fined 200,000 euros for failing to stop the plotting.
“At the moment we are trying to directly address what appears to look like it could be a systemic ethical shortcoming, in a way that's, frankly, unfortunately painful right now, but is turning out to be a necessary part of the rehabilitation process,” Blue added.
"Upon gathering more information from that review, that will be an additional opportunity to see what steps additionally need to be taken, if any."
