Eckert’s Spygate ban may be lenient, but no sane manager will try the same trick again

“Hi Tonda, are you a cheat?” That simple, succinct, question cut to the heart of a matter that has vexed the Football Association all summer. It was posed by the Northern Echo’s Dominic Shaw after Southampton overcame Middlesbrough in the second leg of May’s Championship playoff semi‑final and proved the cue for Tonda Eckert to walk out of his press conference at St Mary’s.

Although Southampton’s manager subsequently admitted to authorising spying on opponents, England’s football authorities struggled to decide what punishment best fitted an act some regard as heinous but which others fail to take seriously. Now, in autumn, we finally have an FA verdict, with Eckert given a six-week ban suspended until the end of the 2027-28 season, a £28,000 fine and a reprimand.

Related: Southampton manager Tonda Eckert given six-week suspended ban for Spygate scandal

Despite the apparent leniency of the sanction, one thing is clear: Eckert’s summer in purgatory surely dictates no sane England-based coach would contemplate engaging in espionage now.

Eckert may wish he could turn back time to early May and rewrite history. On the eve of the playoff semi-final first leg on Teesside, William Salt, then an intern Southampton first-team analyst, was caught lurking awkwardly beside a tree while filming a Middlesbrough training session on his iPhone. Spygate was born and an independent disciplinary commission convened by the Football League (EFL) expelled Southampton from the playoff final against Hull after their win against Boro across two legs. The governing body also decreed the Saints would begin the current Championship season on minus four points.

By then Southampton had also admitted to spying on Oxford and Ipswich training. There is a certain irony that Eckert’s team won none of the three games – albeit Middlesbrough were ultimately beaten on aggregate – involving covert surveillance. Yet the EFL independent disciplinary commission panel made plain its discomfort regarding the “particularly deplorable” pressure placed on a young worker hired on a temporary contract. Salt has since been given a staff job as an analyst in Southampton’s academy and is reportedly progressing well.

With the EFL empowered to sanction clubs but not individuals in such cases, it was down to the FA to punish Eckert. The 33-year-old German issued a public apology in June but was not charged with misconduct by the FA until late July. A further hiatus ensued before a hearing at Wembley on 24 September.

This extraordinary delay afforded Eckert ample time to regret dispatching Salt to Middlesbrough’s training ground adjacent to the luxury Rockliffe Hall Hotel and golf course just south of Darlington. Salt’s primary mission was to discover whether Hayden Hackney, Middlesbrough’s star midfielder and the Championship player of the season, was fit after injury. Unfortunately, clandestine manoeuvres were evidently not his strong suit. Salt soon found himself being chased into hotel toilets, and realised that using his bank card to buy a coffee at Rockliffe had not been the smartest move. That payment facilitated a search for his name on Southampton’s website. It was swiftly identified, enabling Steve Gibson, Middlesbrough’s owner, to make a formal complaint to the EFL regarding a breach of its anti-spying regulations.

It is understood that, until this point, Southampton’s manager remained unaware of the Bev Priestman precedent. The former head coach of Canada Women was banned from all football activity for a year by Fifa after being found guilty of initiating spying. During the 2024 Paris Olympics her staff secretly filmed a New Zealand training session using a drone and the former England women’s assistant manager paid a high price.

It is unclear whether Eckert has since been in touch with the 40-year-old, now in charge of Wellington Phoenix. Priestman met such extreme hostility in previously welcoming Canada that she relocated her family to New Zealand. During ‘Spygate’, Eckert’s wife was heavily pregnant and based in Berlin, preparing for the birth of their first child. Back in Hampshire, her husband received death threats via LinkedIn. Southampton supplied the manager with protection while police advised him that driving his own car was unsafe and that he should restrict his movements.

Plenty of people were extremely angry, with St Mary’s regulars polarised between those who believed the manager had shamed their club and should be sacked, and others who reflected that what is euphemistically called “training observation” of opponents is commonplace and largely unpunished across tracts of Europe. The second camp remembered that, seven years ago, Leeds were fined £200,000 after the club’s then manager, Marcelo Bielsa, sent an analyst to monitor a Derby training session. Frank Lampard, then in charge of Derby, complained after spotting him perched up a tree.

After that incident the EFL tightened its regulations regarding espionage appreciably. Nonetheless, Eckert’s advocates claim that, given he started last season as Southampton’s under-21s coach and became the manager after Will Still’s sacking in November, he had missed the EFL’s annual managerial summer rules refresher course.

Eckert, who began his career as a Germany national team analyst before moving into coaching at Cologne, RB Salzburg, RB Leipzig, Bayern Munich, Barnsley and Genoa, was only half-joking when he recently told reporters that the EFL handbook was his staple bedside summer reading. He also made contact with Gareth Southgate and visited the former England and Middlesbrough, manager, with the pair discussing English football culture and its zero tolerance for spycraft at length.

“I would lie if I said this summer’s been easy,” said Eckert last month. “I’ve asked the FA for forgiveness.” He has had unwavering support from Southampton’s board who made it clear they had no desire to sack him in the face of considerable dressing room hostility on the part offrom players who felt betrayed by ‘Spygate’.

With first-team hearts and minds since seemingly recaptured by the coach who led them so close to promotion last season, Southampton have won four and drawn two of their opening eight Championship games. Next up on Sunday is the visit of Portsmouth. South-coast derbies are invariably tense but Eckert’s reprieve may ensure he cuts an unusually relaxed figure in the technical area.