Canada entered the 2024 Summer Games as the defending Olympic women’s soccer champion. One of the main storylines of the tournament was expected to be who could stop the Canadians from again winning gold.
Indeed, Canada grabbed plenty of headlines, just not for the reasons anybody could have expected. And that includes midfielder Julia Grosso, a midfielder for the Canadian national team who had left Italian side Juventus and signed with the Red Stars two weeks before the Olympics kicked off.
On July 22, the New Zealand team told police it saw a drone flying over practice. The drone was tracked to a staffer of Canada Soccer, which New Zealand was scheduled to play three days later. The ensuing scandal resulted in Canada being docked six points, the revelation of a “systemic culture,” and coach Beverly Priestman leaving the tournament with a one-year suspension.
Despite the six-point penalty, Canada survived the group stage before losing to Germany on penalties in the quarterfinals.
“I’m just really proud of the team and our response to all of that,” Grosso told the Sun-Times. “The players, we didn’t deserve any of that. I’m proud of us for sticking it out.”
When Grosso and her teammates found out about the spying, they were in a meeting. She said “it was definitely heartbreaking” and also disappointing to hear. Grosso stressed that she and her colleagues were unaware of the drone usage until it became public, and that none of them were anticipating what happened.
Instead of looking back at these Games as a negative, Grosso is trying to see things differently.
“For my team, if anything, I’ll be trying to take the positives out of it because I obviously don’t want to look at the Olympics as a negative because it’s still an Olympics,” said Grosso, who was part of the team that won gold in 2021 in Tokyo. “We were just trying to make the most out of what we could. I just think that how we reacted said a lot about the team and how we are together. It united us because we had nothing to lose at that point.
“We were deducted six points, so it’s kind of like just go out there and leave it all on the field.”
That doesn’t mean the experience was easy.
The team was subjected to uncomfortable questions and distractions before and during the second-most important women’s soccer tournament. The saga has led to questions about the Canadian program’s recent achievements and how much they were aided by underhanded tactics.
The news that broke just as the Games dawned also cast a shadow over what’s usually a rare and special experience: competing in the Olympics.
“It was hard to hear because that has nothing to do with us. We did not know that was going on,” Grosso said. “It’s just not fair to us, especially [since] the Olympics comes every four years. You’re working your butt off to get to that point and for it to just be taken away like that, even though we did win those games, [it] was a really hard situation.”
After all of that, Grosso is eager to begin anew with the Red Stars. Signing a player with an international pedigree represents a coup for the team.
“I thought Chicago was the right place for me, with the coaching staff and even the area,” Grosso said. “It feels like home here.”