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Saints head coach issues apology in club video messageDragan Solak wants to ‘close the chapter and look ahead’Tonda Eckert has apologised for orchestrating the Spygate scandal that culminated in Southampton being kicked out of the Championship playoff final. Southampton, who observed training sessions of three opponents last season, were denied the chance to win promotion after an independent disciplinary commission found the club “seriously violated” the integrity of the competition.Eckert, publicly addressing the six charges made by the English Football League for the first time in a video message released by the club, said he accepted “full responsibility”, adding: “I apologise to all of the clubs that have been involved and mostly I apologise to our supporters.” In a similar address, the Southampton owner, Dragan Solak, said he wants the German head coach who is under investigation from the Football Association, to lead the club into the Premier League next season.Eckert cited his coaching experiences in Germany and Italy and Pep Guardiola’s previous comments as “context” to the spying missions. Eckert ordered analysts to observe Oxford United and Ipswich Town during the regular season, before sending an analyst to Middlesbrough on the eve of their playoff semi-final first leg. In Germany, Eckert worked for Bayern Munich, RB Leipzig and FC Koln, and in Italy he worked at Genoa alongside Southampton’s current sporting director, Johannes Spors.“When I worked in Italy for over four years, every starting lineup that we have chosen for the games was always out in the media before games, and the reason is our training sessions, especially the ones before games, have always been observed, by media and from opponent teams we came up against,” said Eckert. “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.”In April, the panel found, an intern was asked to surveil Ipswich while the team trained for a fixture at Southampton at the ground of nearby Eastleigh. The intern said he was told “the boss is adamant that someone needs to go” but refused to take on the task. An academy analyst was chosen instead and recorded footage of a session. Eckert said the reason for spying on Oxford was because he wanted to establish whether they would shift from a “back five to a back four” in defence and Middlesbrough to ascertain whether Hayden Hackney would feature. “None of what has happened had any affect on the sporting performance,” said Eckert.Eckert alluded to the need to rebuild bridges with supporters, if he avoids a FA ban. “I am devastated after six months of building that relationship back up, the season has come to an end, an end that couldn’t have left us in a worse place,” he said. “I don’t want to say this to excuse anything we have done, I just want to give you context to the way that I grew up in the football world. For everything that has happened, I do want to apologise and I hold my hand up because as head coach I am responsible.”Solak said he wants to “close the chapter and look ahead together as one, including Tonda and his staff. Tonda’s period as a head coach has been a success so far. Our form during 2026 has been remarkable and we believe he is the man to take us forward. As a board, we are fully behind him and together we have only one objective: we want promotion back to the Premier League.”

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Interns were pressured into recording other clubsHead coach says he did not know actions broke rulesSouthampton’s head coach, Tonda Eckert, initiated the practice of spying on opponents, according to new documents which also show that an intern tasked with recording rival training sessions was assured the “manager loved it”.Southampton were expelled from the Championship playoffs last month after they were found to have spied on Oxford United, Ipswich and Middlesbrough. Eckert is under investigation by the Football Association and newly published remarks from the panel that rejected the club’s appeal against their expulsion lend credence to the belief that he was central to the project.According to the written reasons of an English Football League arbitration panel, the first instance of spying took place before Southampton’s Boxing Day fixture against Oxford and was prompted by the head coach. “Mr Eckert asked if someone could go to observe the Oxford training session to see how they were lining up and whether a particular player was fit to play,” the panel notes, in reference to Cameron Brannagan. Eckert told a disciplinary commission he had been surprised to find such actions were against the rules.Eckert made his suggestion in a meeting of Southampton’s analysis team, the panel writes, and an analyst identified an intern to undertake the job. In written evidence to the commission, the intern said he “didn’t really have an option” over accepting the instruction and “wasn’t provided an opportunity to say no”.After the intern had observed two Oxford training sessions he sent “updates, photographs and videos” back to the club “concerning matters such as tactical shape and player selection”, the panel writes. Eckert said he did not watch footage from the sessions. He did, however, have a phone conversation with the intern after the sessions had been observed, according to the panel, and a member of the analysis team wrote to the intern on WhatsApp: “Try and make out as much as you can please. You legend. Manager loved it.”In April, the panel writes, the intern was asked to surveil Ipswich while the team trained for a fixture at Southampton at the ground of nearby Eastleigh. The intern said he was told “the boss is adamant that someone needs to go” but refused to take on the task. An academy analyst was chosen instead and recorded footage of a session. Eckert told the commission he had been made aware of the footage two hours before kick-off and that he thought it had been recorded on CCTV by Eastleigh.The third instance was against Middlesbrough. The original intern was asked to undertake the assignment and agreed, arguing later that he had felt his job would have been at risk had he not. He was also, according to the panel, criticised by Eckert for not flying up immediately upon accepting the assignment.His visit went on to become notorious after he was caught filming a training session. The intern had waited on Eckert’s instruction to return home but left when it never arrived and learned of the accusations made against the club on the train home. According to the panel, Eckert told the commission: “The videos were of poor quality, taken from far distance and so, they were of no benefit to him.”Southampton’s appeal against removal from the playoffs and a four-point deduction in next season’s Championship was rejected. The panel found the club gained sporting advantage from their spying – noting “sporting advantage is different from sporting success” – and found precedents for applying a stringent sporting sanction in such cases. The FA’s investigation is continuing.