{"id":782844,"date":"2026-05-08T21:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/782844\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T21:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:57:14","slug":"southampton-spying-probe-saints-charged-by-efl-with-spying-on-middlesbrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/782844\/","title":{"rendered":"Southampton spying probe: Saints charged by EFL with spying on Middlesbrough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saints are accused of breaking two regulations: <\/p>\n

EFL Regulation 3.4<\/b>, which requires clubs to act towards each other with the utmost good faith; and<\/p>\n

EFL Regulation 127<\/b>, which prohibits any club from observing, or attempting to observe, another club’s training session within 72 hours of a scheduled match between the two clubs.<\/p>\n

“Under EFL regulations, Southampton would ordinarily have 14 days to respond to the charges,” the statement added. <\/p>\n

“However, given the nature of the matter, the EFL will ask the independent disciplinary commission to shorten the response period and to list a hearing at the earliest opportunity.”<\/p>\n

The first leg of their semi-final takes place at Riverside Stadium on Saturday (12:30 BST<\/a>), with the return at St Mary’s on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The rule against spying was brought in seven years ago after Leeds United were fined \u00a3200,000<\/a> by the EFL for watching opponents train before matches.<\/p>\n

A member of Leeds’ staff was found acting suspiciously outside Derby’s training ground before a fixture between the two sides on 10 January 2019.<\/p>\n

Manager Marcelo Bielsa revealed he had sent a member of staff to watch training sessions of every team Leeds had played that season.<\/p>\n

The EFL found Leeds breached rules over treating teams with “good faith”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saints are accused of breaking two regulations: EFL Regulation 3.4, which requires clubs to act towards each other…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":782845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-782844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116541197310095703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}