FA hands Tonda Eckert six-week suspended ban, £28,000 fine and reprimand over spying
Southampton head coach Tonda Eckert has been handed a six-week ban suspended until the end of the 2027-28 season, a £28,000 fine and a reprimand by the Football Association after admitting to authorising spying on opponents in the wake of last season’s playoff controversy in autumn.
The episode began in May when, after Southampton overcame Middlesbrough in the second leg of the Championship playoff semi-final at St Mary’s, Dominic Shaw of the Northern Echo asked: "Hi Tonda, are you a cheat?" That question prompted Eckert to leave his press conference; he later admitted to authorising surveillance. The Football League convened an independent disciplinary commission that expelled Southampton from the playoff final against Hull and ordered the club to start the following Championship season on minus four points, and the club also admitted to spying on Oxford and Ipswich training sessions.
On the eve of the playoff semi-final first leg on Teesside, William Salt, then an intern and Southampton first-team analyst, was spotted beside a tree filming a Middlesbrough training session on his iPhone. Salt’s task was reportedly to establish whether Hayden Hackney, described in the article as Middlesbrough’s star midfielder and the Championship player of the season, was fit after injury. Salt was chased into hotel toilets at Rockliffe Hall Hotel and golf course just south of Darlington, and a bank card purchase of a coffee at Rockliffe allowed investigators to identify him on Southampton’s website; Middlesbrough owner Steve Gibson then lodged a formal complaint with the EFL.
The EFL independent disciplinary commission criticised the pressure placed on a young, temporary worker, describing it as "particularly deplorable," and made clear the league can sanction clubs but not individuals in such cases. Salt has since been given a staff role as an analyst in Southampton’s academy and is reportedly progressing well. Because the EFL cannot punish individuals, the FA assumed responsibility for disciplining Eckert.
Eckert, 33, issued a public apology in June but was not charged by the FA until late July; a hearing took place at Wembley on 24 September. His advocates have argued he began the previous season as Southampton’s under-21s coach and only became first-team manager after Will Still’s sacking in November, and that 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, told reporters he was only half-joking when he said the EFL handbook was his staple bedside summer reading; he also made contact with Gareth Southgate and visited the former England and Middlesbrough manager, and the pair discussed English football culture and its zero tolerance for spycraft at length.
The article references a separate precedent in which Bev Priestman 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. Priestman is now in charge of Wellington Phoenix, and the article says it is unclear whether Eckert has since been in touch with the 40-year-old; Priestman faced such hostility in Canada that she relocated her family to New Zealand according to the piece.
The wider fallout affected Eckert personally: his wife was heavily pregnant and based in Berlin preparing for the birth of their first child while he received death threats via LinkedIn. Southampton provided him with protection and police advised that driving his own car was unsafe and that he should restrict his movements. The club’s dressing room was reported as polarised between players who believed the manager had shamed the club and should be sacked and others who argued that training observation is commonplace in parts of Europe; Southampton’s board maintained they had no desire to dismiss him.
Southampton have won four and drawn two of their opening eight Championship games since the controversy, and their next fixture is the visit of Portsmouth on Sunday.