Middlesbrough-Southampton spying row: What are the rules and what punishments could follow?

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The teams that finished fifth and fourth in the final league table meet in their semi-final first leg tomorrow lunchtime aiming to take a decisive step towards the Wembley final later this month, yet the build-up has been a story of spying, complaints and potential recriminations. The Athletic looks at the key questions ahead of the two sides’ meeting at the Riverside Stadium. Being somewhere they shouldn’t have been, in short. Middlesbrough staff became aware of a figure secretly filming a training session at their Rockliffe Park complex on Thursday. The man is believed to be a first-team analyst in Southampton’s backroom set-up and was recording Middlesbrough’s preparations for tomorrow’s game using his phone. It was reported on Thursday evening that a Middlesbrough employee confronted the man, who ran off to get changed in the club house of the nearby golf course. Middlesbrough are understood to have CCTV footage of the incident. If the ‘spy’ really was doing what he seemed, Middlesbrough would hold obvious ground for a grievance. A penultimate training session ahead of a fixture that will shape which club goes on to earn up to £200million as a Premier League club was allegedly monitored by a rival. Little wonder a statement from the EFL confirmed that Middlesbrough had subsequently made a complaint, with the league duly writing to Southampton requesting an explanation. The EFL called it “alleged unauthorised filming” and would treat it as potential misconduct. The EFL has a clear ruling on this one, prohibiting any club from “directly or indirectly observing” another team’s training session 72 hours before they are due to meet. That is Rule 127, introduced as a means of stopping any team gaining an unfair advantage from watching how an opponent might line up or use set pieces. More broadly the EFL says “each club shall behave towards each other and the league with the utmost good faith”. Southampton, it is alleged, have failed to do so given the incident took place roughly 48 hours before the teams were due to meet in the first leg tomorrow. This, in all likelihood, will result in a significant fine if Southampton are found guilty. There is a historic precedent (more on that shortly) and no apparent scope for a misconduct breach to result in a sporting sanction, such as omission from the play-offs. The more immediate impact of all of this will be on the atmosphere when Southampton travel to Teesside tomorrow lunchtime. Very little publicly. Middlesbrough manager Kim Hellberg gave his media conference on Thursday ahead of the news breaking, delaying the opportunity to hear his thoughts on the matter until the hour before the teams meet. Middlesbrough, too, have offered no formal comment. The same extends to Southampton, whose official updates on Friday extended simply to head coach Tonda Eckert winning the Championship’s Manager of the Month prize for the third time in a row after claiming 14 points from a possible 18 in April. The only formal comment has come from the EFL to confirm they would be following up Middlesbrough’s complaint. Yes, and you do not need to go far back to find the case of then Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa ordering his own analyst to observe a Derby County training session ahead of meeting in 2019. That incident saw police called to Derby’s training ground owing to a figure acting suspiciously among the trees but Bielsa soon accepted culpability. “I am the only one responsible,” he would later tell reporters. The EFL was not amused and, under pressure from a number of clubs that sought an investigation into Bielsa’s scouting methods, it fined Leeds £200,000. “The sanctions imposed highlight how actions such as this cannot be condoned and act as a clear deterrent should any club seek to undertake poor conduct in the future,” said Shaun Harvey, then of the EFL and now part of Wrexham’s rebuild as a director. Bielsa insisted on paying the fine out of his own pocket but it was his counterpart, Frank Lampard, who ended up gaining the upper hand. Derby would beat Leeds in, yes, you’ve guessed it, the Championship play-offs four months later. A remarkable comeback at Elland Road saw Derby players celebrating while making binoculars from their hands. Hardly common but not unheard of. Eddie Jones, the former England rugby union coach, claimed that his squad were spied on ahead of their World Cup semi-final against New Zealand in 2019, an allegation he had previously made against the All Blacks when in charge of Australia in 2003. Jones suggested that a long-lens camera had filmed England’s training session from an apartment block overlooking their base. More claims of spying in rugby union came during the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia in 2013. One person, who it transpired was a wedding planner, was thrown out of a training session in Perth and made to delete pictures he had taken. That brought accusations of paranoia to the Lions’ door. Albeit in different circumstances, the NFL had its own ‘Spygate’ scandal in the 2007 season. It was found that the New England Patriots were filming opposing coaches’ signals from an unauthorised location during a game against the New York Jets. That was deemed to violate rules and an investigation concluded with Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick being fined $500,000 and his team being denied their original first-round selection in the 2008 Draft. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms