Is spying as common in Germany as Southampton boss Eckert claims?

When Southampton manager Tonda Eckert apologised to fans for the Spygate scandal in a video broadcast on Tuesday, he doubled down on his claim that spying on opposition teams' training sessions is common practice in his native Germany.

"When I worked in Italy for four years, every starting line-up we chose was 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 opponent teams," the 33-year-old said.

"[Pep] Guardiola has spoken about this in his time at Bayern, that it has been common practice in Germany to observe training sessions, knowing that other teams would do the same."

Eckert, who joined Southampton as Under-21s manager last summer before taking charge of the first team in the autumn, claimed that his ignorance of the rules outlawing spying led to the English Football League (EFL) throwing Saints out of last month's Championship play-offs.

"There are different rules in England, different rules in the EFL, and I should have known them," he said.

Eckert now faces an investigation by the Football Association into his conduct, and could be handed a ban if charged and found guilty.

So, is spying as commonplace in Germany, and is cultural difference a suitable defence?

Spying can be conducted far more easily in Germany, because many sides in the Bundesliga hold regular open training sessions which can be attended by the public.

Though aimed at fans, there is in theory nothing stopping an opposition member of staff from turning up and recording observations.

Guardiola did indeed reveal that the Bayern side he coached between 2013 and 2016 was subject to spying, with no rules banning it in the Bundesliga.

"In other countries everyone does it, [but] it's more difficult here," the former Manchester City manager said of English football in 2019. "At Munich there were people with cameras watching what we do.

"Everyone wants to know everything. That's not just football, it's society."

There have been a few high-profile stories relating to spying in Germany.

The now RB Leipzig manager Ole Werner admitted that when coaching Werder Bremen he had drones fly over opposition training grounds and sent members of his backroom team to hide in bushes.

In one instance under previous boss Florian Kohfeldt, Werder had to apologise when one of their video analysts was caught flying a drone over Hoffenheim's training ground, leading to a police investigation into a potential aviation offence.

A journalist who spent a season following Union Berlin also recounted how he witnessed the club's sporting director chase away a Werder staff member spying on the team by threatening to send a photograph of him to a newspaper.

Former Borussia Dortmund manager Edin Terzic admitted that he disguised himself as a steward to watch a Real Madrid training session before a Champions League fixture in 2013.

But those examples don't necessarily mean every single team in Germany is spying on their rivals.

In cases where they do, what is the reaction?

"The general feeling is that spying is a side issue and not taken very seriously," says Kevin Hatchard, a Bundesliga match commentator.

"There has never been outrage on the same scale as Southampton.

"Open training sessions are deemed fair game for spying. Often in the build-up to a game we'll notice a team must be working on something new tactically when they firm things up at their training ground.

"When somebody is caught spying, the reaction tends to be 'better look next time you cheeky scamp', rather then real serious anger and demanding sackings. Even when Werner admitted it his outlook was 'haha, what am I like?'

"I think if the Bundesliga had rules against it then you would get more pushback and proper punishments.

"What is different with Eckert is that official rules have been put in place that he has broken."

When describing his past experiences of spying in Germany and Italy, where he worked as assistant manager to Patrick Vieira at Genoa, Eckert said: "I don't want to say this to excuse anything we have done, I just want to give you context of the football world I grew up in."

Indeed, the Southampton scandal is not the first spying case in which teams Eckert has worked for have been accused, though the level of his involvement in those previous incidents is unclear.

In 2015 the German newspaper Kicker reported that Cologne - where Eckert was working as a youth coach - had sent an analyst to spy on Hamburg during a warm-weather training camp in Dubai.

And at the 2014 World Cup, suspicion fell on Germany when France manager Didier Deschamps said he had to stop a private training session because a drone was flying overhead. Eckert worked as an analyst for the team.

"We don't want any intrusion into our privacy but it's hard to fight this these days," Deschamps said.

The reason it is hard to ascertain to what extent spying has been a part of Eckert's development is he has conducted no media interviews since the scandal broke.

He fell foul of the EFL's rule outlawing watching opponents train within 72 hours of a match. Had the staff member gone days earlier, as Eckert had originally asked, they would have escaped sanction on a technicality.

"The whole thing was stupid and ill-conceived," says Steve Grant, co-host of the Total Saints podcast.

"But it is a very British thing to clutch our pearls at the concept of fair play [regarding spying] while being happy for our centre-forward to dive in the penalty area."

Eckert's claim that he was unaware of the EFL's rules has also come in for criticism, given he previously spent a year and a half working as assistant manager at Barnsley in League One.

"There is definitely a cultural difference between Germany and England," Hatchard adds.

"But for somebody who is so detail-oriented in his coaching, I am staggered that Eckert didn't take the time to think, 'right, I know this happens more often in Germany, but can I really do it here?'

"Once you're the main guy it's pretty unforgivable to not think about the gravity of what he was doing, how it would be perceived, and what the consequences may be."