'I am responsible': Southampton head coach Tonda Eckert apologises over ‘Spygate’
“I am responsible for everything that has happened at this football club.”
Southampton head coach Tonda Eckert has apologised for orchestrating the ‘Spygate’ scandal and admitted he is responsible for “everything that has happened”.
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Saints were thrown out of the Championship play-offs last month after admitting to sending a young intern to spy on a Middlesbrough training session.
The EFL said the south-coast club were found guilty of a “deplorable” act of putting pressure on the junior member of staff to spy on Boro.
In a damning verdict, the governing body said Southampton boss Eckert authorised the spying.
The German has now put out a lengthy video statement on club media, which began: “I will try to be as honest and clear as I can be.
“For everything that has happened, I do want to apologise and I hold my hand up because as head coach I am responsible.
“I am responsible for everything that has happened at this football club.”
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As well as play-off semi-final opponents Boro, Saints were also found guilty of spying on Ipswich and Oxford during the regular season.
“I apologise to all of the clubs that have been involved and mostly I apologise to our supporters,” added Eckert, who explained that spying on teams is commonplace in other countries.
“When I worked in Italy for over four years, every starting line-up that we have chosen for the games was always out in the media before games.
“The reason is that our training sessions, especially the ones before games, have always been observed from the media and have always been observed by opponent teams that we came up against.
“(Pep) Guardiola has spoken about this in his time at Bayern Munich, that it has been common practice in Germany to observe training sessions knowing that other teams would do the same.
“I don’t want to say this to excuse anything that we have done. I just want to give you context in the way that I grew up in the football world.”