Qaris. Canada on Friday pulled its women's soccer coach, Bev Priestman, from the remainder of the Paris Olympics after new evidence emerged of drone spying on a rival team.

The decision by the North American team, the current Olympic champions, comes a day after team assistant Jasmine Mander and analyst Joey Lombardi were sent back to the country for using a drone to film a training session in New Zealand, one of their rivals in the group stage.

Lombardi was arrested by French police and given an eight-month suspended prison sentence in a case that will be investigated by FIFA.

The Canadian Soccer Federation called on FIFA on Friday not to sanction the team over the spying scandal.

Kevin Blue, executive director of the Canadian soccer federation (Canada Soccer), defended his players on Friday, assuring that they had not seen any images recorded by drones and that they should therefore not be punished with loss of points.

The Canadian team beat New Zealand (2-1) on Thursday in its Olympic soccer debut, which began just days before the opening ceremony on Friday.

Priestman did not sit on the bench for this game.

While he did not specify how long the films had been going on, the Canada Soccer executive said internal sources suggest “this type of behaviour could be systemic.”

“But the players were not involved in any unethical behavior,” Blue stressed. “And frankly, we ask FIFA to take that into account if they are considering further sanctions.”

“In particular, we do not believe that a point deduction in this tournament is fair to our players,” she stressed.