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It’s become the most famous tree in the land; as stood beside by someone from Southampton Football Club, to spy on Middlesbrough FC at the Wearside club’s training ground outside Darlington, before their Championship semi-final play-off after the 2025-6 season. The winner, which turned out to be Southampton, would play Hull, the other semi-final winner, at Wembley and the winner would be promoted to the Premier League. Except that Southampton fell foul of what the media gleefully pronounced was ‘spygate’. An English Football League (EFL) panel expelled Southampton from the play-offs, and (of less consequence) gave a further four-point penalty for next season. Southampton, though admitting what they had done was wrong, appealed, but their appeal was dismissed. Observing training sessions is ‘prohibited conduct’. More generally, clubs must behave towards each other ‘with the utmost good faith’. Southampton pleaded in vain that the punishment (denying them the chance to compete for a possible £200m gain from a season in the Premier League) was disproportionate.
Rules
Ignorance of the law is no excuse; and besides, the EFL handbook of rules is online. Under EFL regulations, 127 states ‘no club shall directly or indirectly observe (or attempt to observe) another club’s training session in the period of 72 hours prior to any match scheduled to be played between those respective clubs’.
Tradecraft
A first rule of the tradecraft of soldiering is that you avoid detection by blending in with the landscape; you crouch or lie down instead of stand, wear camouflage (hence drab nets worn infamously by two Southampton fans in the actual fixture against Middlesbrough, to mock the spied upon club). Those with experience of covert surveillance, typically from the military, not only learn such methods, but the discipline to avoid drawing attention to themselves. It can mean embracing discomfort; to get into position the night or perhaps days beforehand if necessary; and peeing into a bottle, even, to stay unmoving.
Why attend?
A security consultant who’s done covert surveillance and penetration testing (‘I have dug under fences, and avoided cameras’) commented to Professional Security Magazine on the attempt to observe that a human need not have been there at all; instead, a spy could have installed a camera in the tree (specialist models painted to blend in, while not mass market, are unremarkable). A drone, however small, would make some noise; and the pilot might be traceable if within line of sight. Footage could be streamed, or saved on a card; even if the device was seen and taken down, the finders could not tell who fitted it and for what purpose. The crime, he suggested, was to get caught: “They have been so naive. I know everyone wants to get an advantage; but if you are going to do that, think about how you do it properly … there are ways it could be done without getting caught.”
How much happens?
How much ‘observing’ goes on? As with corporate espionage, it’s hard to say whether cases that make the public domain are the tip of an iceberg, or indeed how much spying goes on (freelance or by hired investigators) by husbands on wives suspected of having an affair, or by businesses suspecting employees of fraud. Quoted by Southampton is an equivalent case from the 2018-19 season when Leeds United, also then in the second tier of English football, was fined £200,000 for spying on training by Derby County. The then Leeds manager, the highly respected Marcelo Bielsa, volunteered that he had opponents’ training watched before every match. Why? In professional sport, any insight into an opponent can mean the difference between a win and a draw or loss, if it enables the team doing the spying to work out a way of countering what the spied-upon team are practising, thereby anticipating what the opposition is planning, rather than having to improvise a response during the play. In elite sport, where both sides are highly proficient, to coin a phrase every ‘incremental gain’ counts, no matter how ethically gained. Other cases are in the public domain from other sports, and Formula 1 motor racing.
Further problems
The security consultant suggested further possible ramifications for Southampton; as anticipated in the club’s statement of May 20. Southampton said it was ‘writing to the EFL to volunteer our participation in a working group on the practical application and enforcement of Regulation 127 across the Championship’. In other words, a classic manoeuvre in brand reputational management; seeking to turn a negative into a positive (‘contrition without change is hollow, and we intend to demonstrate change’, and ‘trust needs to be rebuilt’). However, as the security consultant added: “Everyone is going to be suspicious of Southampton, for ten, 15 years.”
Questions
Memories might not be that long and new scandals may surpass this one; however, as the consultant noted, the affair may have further to unravel, depending on who wants to ask such questions as: who told the young man to drive up half the country to view the training ground; who was looking at the (live streamed?) footage; was it a one-off, or routine? Who gave permission? In the all-time famous Watergate case in the United States in the 1970s, the actual act of ‘dirty tricks’ (burglary paid for by the Republican Party of rival Democrats’ premises) paled before the trail of approvals, and the cover-up. You can face observers at professional sports’ training grounds and at a corporate site, shiny head office or gritty factory, alike. Indeed, so-called ‘citizen journalists’ may relish being caught, so that they can film themselves in a confrontation with a security or police officer, or anyone that creates watchable ‘content’ that will earn the confronter a living off Youtube. To counter such intrusion: you carry out a security survey, and can physically test how easy it is to get in, whether the intruder seeks to find something (a prototype), or to do something illegal (plug in a memory stick or listening device). The consultant said: “It needs a lot of planning and preparation and ways of making sure you do it successfully; you do it as professionally as you can and don’t get caught.”
Risk
Risk of espionage at sports training fields depends on location. Many – Middlesbrough’s at Rockliffe Park, Leeds’ at Thorp Arch near Wetherby (across the road from a prison), and England’s national centre at St George’s Park outside Burton upon Trent; and indeed Southampton’s at Marchwood – are in the countryside. By May at St George’s Park, as England manager Thomas Tuchel and his World Cup squad are about to attend, it looks idyllic. Beyond the beautifully mown grass, buttercups are turning fields beyond the perimeter yellow, and pink rhododendrons are out on the outskirts of woodland on higher ground. They offer places of concealment beyond the perimeter, where observers, let alone any devices they plant, may be beyond practical detection.
