‘Disgraceful’ – Emotional Hellberg on Southampton spying row after Middlesbrough are knocked out of play-offs | OneFootball

Middlesbrough boss Kim Hellberg accused Southampton of “disgraceful” behaviour after his side’s Premier League hopes were ended with defeat in the play-offs.

Boro were beaten 2-1 at St Mary’s after an extra-time winner from Shea Charles. but the two-legged tie was overshadowed by allegations that Southampton had spied on their opponents’ training session before the first leg.

The EFL charged Southampton with breaching its rules following the reported incident, with their punishment still unclear, and speaking after his side’s defeat, Hellberg congratulated Southampton but said he felt as though the opportunity to gain a tactical advantage had been taken away from him.

“There are teams, to be fair, that had bigger squads than us,” a visibly emotional Hellberg said. “Teams that have more money to spend. What you have as a coach and what you have as a group is the tactical element of the game, where we can beat the opponent, and that’s what I think everyone loves about the game.

“I think that’s why I look at England and think ‘this is the home of football’. This is where I want to be. This is what I dream about. That’s where I wanted to be here.

“When you battle with teams who have more money and a bigger squad, you try to find a way of doing the tactical element to get an advantage.

“That is what you always try to do because we can be better in that element. When that is taken away from you, I think it’s no longer fair.

“It has nothing to do with what they saw, how they affected the game, if it was free kicks they saw, or goal kicks they saw, whatever they saw.

“This is our football and I think you should fight quite hard for it. I think Alex Neil (Millwall manager) said a very good thing after their game. He said, ‘I think I let people down after the game when we haven’t won.’

“That’s often the feeling a coach goes home with, because you think what I could control was the tactical aspect of the game. What I could control was helping my players more, and when you have done that and for a week or two weeks up to this game, put every second away from your family to watch Southampton every game, so you can to try to gain that advantage that we can actually get. When you go home to your family and say, ‘No, I’m not coming home, I’m going to see more games of them.’

“If we wouldn’t have caught that man who they sent five hours up, you would sit there and say well done in the tactical aspect of the game and I would go home and feel like I have failed in that aspect that I had to help my players with.

“When that is taken away from you in that way, when someone decides ‘no, we’re not going to watch every game, we will send someone instead’ and they film the session and see everything and hope they don’t get caught.

“I guess that was why he had the switch of clothes and all those things that I have seen on the CCTV, which I can say, because I know it happened. It breaks my heart in terms of all those things I believed in.

“I don’t care if there’s different rules in other countries. This is England. I think this is where football is the biggest thing. That’s my feelings about it. I think that is disgraceful to a colleague who you work against. It makes me very sad.”