\n<\/p>\n
Former Canada women\u2019s football coach Bev Priestman has said she \u201cdidn\u2019t feel safe\u201d living in North America following her one-year ban for spying at the Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n
Wellington Phoenix announced Wednesday that Priestman would take over as head coach of their women\u2019s team, returning to football in the country she was banned for spying on with a drone, New Zealand. She has signed a two-year contract.<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old was visibly emotional as she discussed her suspension, and how nervous she is to be returning to the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t feel safe,\u201d Priestman said of living in Canada after the Olympics. \u201cThat\u2019s being brutally honest. It was very difficult for my family, and I have to live with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it was an absolute media frenzy. You\u2019ve got people knocking at your door and everything, and I\u2019ve got a little boy. Without going into too much detail, it was very difficult. We knew we had to get out of that country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifa banned Priestman for one year after her coaching team used a drone to snoop on New Zealand before they played at the Paris Games.<\/p>\n
New Zealand had spotted drones flying over their training sessions before their opening match and reported it to officials. An investigation found the Canadian team had been spying on rival training sessions for some time.<\/p>\n
Priestman said she is prevented from speaking about the situation in detail, due to ongoing legal discussions. But on her return to New Zealand she said she had talked to players and officials.<\/p>\n
She said the move to Wellington was an opportunity to \u201creset\u201d her career, and rebuild.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, hours after her ban was lifted, she ran her first coaching session in more than a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI celebrated last night coaching the under-7s, my son\u2019s team, in the pouring Wellington rain,\u201d Priestman said. \u201cThat was a nice, humbling experience. They got all the energy from me in that moment because I\u2019ve just been itching to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Sign up to Moving the Goalposts<\/span><\/p>\n No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women\u2019s football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Priestman won the Olympic gold with Canada at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and is the best credentialed coach to come to the women\u2019s A League. She said she had learned from her ban, and her experience with Canada, and would be a better coach for it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s certain values that I hold and unfortunately, you know, things around me have clouded my judgement,\u201d Priestman said. \u201cSo for me personally, I just want to get back to… I love working with people. I love getting the best out of people. I love being on a football pitch.<\/p>\n \u201cI just want to create a special moment for this city, for this country and move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Wellington Phoenix chairman Rob Morrison said he was \u201creally pleased to be able to welcome Bev back to football\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all know she\u2019s had a period of time away from the game, but we understand the circumstances and we\u2019re really comfortable with this appointment. Bev can\u2019t wait to get started, and we\u2019re really happy that she\u2019s going to be coaching the Phoenix.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Canada women\u2019s football coach Bev Priestman has said she \u201cdidn\u2019t feel safe\u201d living in North America following her one-year ban for spying at the Paris Olympics. Wellington Phoenix announced Wednesday that Priestman would take over as head coach of their women\u2019s team, returning to football in the country she was banned for spying on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[6726,163,6721,3223,211,335,6725,6722,951,629,6723,6724,418],"class_list":{"0":"post-13030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-aleague","9":"tag-ban","10":"tag-bev","11":"tag-coach","12":"tag-didnt","13":"tag-feel","14":"tag-phoenix","15":"tag-priestman","16":"tag-returns","17":"tag-safe","18":"tag-spying","19":"tag-wellington","20":"tag-women"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}