The shittiest game in football
Where there is injustice, there is always a choice.
It's that time of the season when human cruelty comes to the fore as English Football League promotions are decided by play-offs.
Every May, we reshuffle the pyramid so that better teams face better teams, next season, and shitter ones face shitter ones. The process is not fair - but it is brilliant.
We decide the best and second-best teams in each league by tallying up their results from across the season and seeing who did the most consistently well - and these guys both get to play with the bigger boys when football returns in August.
The team that ends with the third-most points, though - they must prove that they are definitely the third-best team in the league by seeing off the one that finishes sixth, and then the winner of a game between the ones that finish third and fourth.
It makes sense. If you can't beat the teams below you in the table, then you are not definitively the third-best team in the league. But it's unfair because the teams in first and second escape this fate, and it doesn't allow for a great team to have an off-day, or several - as all great teams do.
Why should your the whole of your next year be decided by a judgement on your last month?
It's easy to see why play-offs are popular among lots of different sports. It keeps the hopes of fans of teams like Bristol City alive for longer as teams further down the table have something to fight for deep into the season. And the all-or-nothing play-off matches provide a wicked dose of high-stakes entertainment for the neutrals.
I've been enjoying the drama this week.
On Thursday a Southampton performance analyst intern was found 300 miles from home, pointing his cameraphone at Middlesbrough's training session as the team prepared to play Saints in their two-legged Championship play-off semi-final.
When approached, he refused to identify himself, deleting the footage as he scurried off to change his clothes in the toilets of the golf club next door. The bent superman act was all captured on CCTV footage and Boro dobbed him in.
Leeds United were guilty of doing something similar under the instruction of former manager Marcelo Bielsa a few years ago. The club were charged with not acting in good faith and charged £200,000, which the principled Bielsa paid out of his own fabled pocket.
He was sincerely remorseful that the 'good faith' charge suggested that he had been a little reckless with the notion of fair play. When he'd coached abroad, these kinds of practices were acceptable. He hadn't known that 'spying' wasn't allowed.
But spying, then, wasn't explicitly not allowed. To clear up confusion, the EFL subsequently introduced a rule against it. Southampton will have been aware of regulation 127, which forbids clubs from observing an opponent's training session in the three days before you face them.
On Friday, the EFL charged Southampton with breaking it. Saints haven't denied it, but they are dragging their feet around the investigation, which the EFL hoped could progress more quickly than the standard two-week period, given that they're in the middle of deciding who is the third-best team in the league.
On Saturday, with none of this resolved, the first leg of the play-off went ahead and, as is often the case, both teams were too frightened to come out and play lest they give up that precious first goal.
It ended 0-0, meaning that the second leg at St Mary's on Tuesday would decide which team would face Hull in the final, dubbed the "richest game in football" for the massive income boost enjoyed by the team that wins and joins the Premier League the following season.
The second leg was a memorable play-off classic featuring questionable officiating, home ball boys playing silly buggers with the visiting players, an accusation of discrimination, and a winner that was quite pathetically stoppable. Not to mention the sort of blood-and-thunder challenges and sliders which fans of the play-off winners can kiss goodbye to once the final whistle goes at Wembley.
Southampton recovered from Boro's fifth-minute opener to put the game to extra time, when Shea Charles met destiny by accident as his speculative cross bobbled into the far corner to give Saints the win.
It was an undignified way for Middlesbrough's hopes to die, but in his post-match press conference Boro coach Kim Hellberg conducted himself with more dignity than is fitting for a hard-done-by football manager.
I had felt a bit 'boo-hoo' about Boro's complaints around Southampton's spying - what could they have learnt in a few minutes' snooping that could meaningfully impact the outcome of this crucial game?
But listening to Hellberg's comments, I was persuaded.
“When I took the Middlesbrough job, I knew that there are clubs with bigger resources or parachute payments, that means more money to spend. There are teams, to be fair, that had bigger squads than us," Hellberg began.
Southampton are one such team, enjoying Premier League payouts to support them in their transition from top-tier to second-tier after being relegated in 2025. Hellberg knew that while some of things were beyond his control, he could still shape his team's fortunes by being a good coach with good ideas.
“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 the advantage," he continued. "That’s 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."
David might outwit the might of Goliath, but not if you allow the giant to read the underdog's mind.
The world of football seems to be united in condemnation of Southampton mainly because, I imagine, a lot of people have experienced the truth that 'life is not fair', have tried their best and been thwarted by injustice. This is why we love the play-offs, after all.
It's a shame that Southampton have so quickly lost good will after their impressive FA Cup run - which ended nobly in a semi-final defeat to Manchester City - had so many rooting for them.
Formerly an academy coach, Tonda Eckert was appointed Southampton manager on an interim basis in November and did such a good job that they let him keep it.
He's never been head coach of a big team so the rate at which he has been collecting brownie points has been unprecedented for young Eckert who, at 33 years old, guided Southampton to an impressive 47 points from the final 20 games of the Championship season.
You can understand, then, why he might feel a bit cheesed off that all this 'spying' lark risks to take the shine off his achievement.
If you'd just won the biggest game of your life - as Eckert did with Southampton on Tuesday - you'd want everyone to be saying how good you are in your post-match press conference. But someone called him a cheat, instead.
I understand why he was cross, and I understand why he felt he couldn't answer the question everyone wanted to ask - 'did you do it?' - because it would spoil the fun surprise that comes at the end of the ongoing investigation.
But I'm sure there is a way of showing remorse without conceding guilt, and Eckert's failure to find this gave the impression of a man without shame or, indeed, an ounce of charm.
As Eckert faced questions he did not want to answer - as football managers do, every week, sometimes more than once - his face said, 'not my problem, fuck off'.
Cheers, Tonda, in the next room your opposite number Kim is literally trying to make amends with his neglected wife and children on the phone.
In his emotional press conference, Boro coach Kim Hellberg suggested that one of the worst bits of the 'Spygate' ordeal was how much time with his family he had given up to swot up before the big game, watching hours of Southampton's previous matches in order to gain that precious edge.
Meanwhile, Eckert skipped the sacrifice, sent a teenager with a railcard and a smartphone on the long trip north while he treated his missus to a Miller and Carter. Or so it felt to Hellberg.
“If we wouldn’t have caught that man who they sent up five hours, you would sit there and say, ‘well done in the tactical aspect of the game,'" he said.
"And I would go home and feel like I have failed in that aspect that I had to help my players with."
The sad fact of this all is, had Southampton not spied, they looked likely to win regardless on the basis of recent form. But now they've handed Hellberg a scapegoat, the chance to blame someone else's patchy morality before his own shortcomings.
What happens now is unclear. Given that the advantage gained by spying is probably marginal, it seems unfair to take away Southampton's chance to win promotion in the play-off final. But equally, the financial penalty they will likely receive is a pittance relative to what Boro feel they could have won if the playing field had been totally, immaculately level.
A lot of people have made the point that spying or otherwise, football is packed with cheating, anyway.
For instance, with the score 1-1 midway through the second half of the semi-final second leg, Boro defender Luke Ayling pushed Saints attacker Leo Scienza on the arm just as Scienza was advancing into the box to shoot.
Scienza fell dramatically to the floor then, anxious that he'd been a little strong in the challenge, Ayling then flopped to the floor himself in the hope of making the fight seem equal. The ref waved the game on, leaving Southampton to feel they'd been hoodwinked out of a penalty.
This shit happens all the time in football. It's tedious to watch and I'm sure it's tedious to officiate. Referees are supposed to stop injustice from happening, but instead they're seen only to choose which team experiences it.
Maybe this is all easier when we accept that life is not, in fact, fair.
Ayling has done so, admirably. It wasn't fair that life handed Ayling a stutter, but he gets on with media interviews, notably emerging as an accountable leader during a period of poor performance at former club Leeds. He has also made himself vulnerable by speaking honestly about his speech impediment in a way that is inspiring for people with disabilities or other kinds of difference.
During Boro's play-off semi-final defeat, Ayling told the referee that Saints defender Taylor Harwood-Bellis had allegedly taken the piss out of his stammer. He later dropped the discrimination allegation and was seen giving Harwood-Bellis a hug in the second half.
An admirable example of making the best of shitty circumstances instead of clinging onto a fantasy of what life would be like if you'd never been served them.
"Control the controllables" is a favoured mantra of sportspeople. For Ayling, this meant choosing to let it go. For Hellberg, who told the press that Southampton's cheating 'broke his heart', he might not have been able to ensure that others would play fair - but he has done a pretty good job of shaping the narrative about it.
And he's done it so well that if Southampton do get to play in the play-off final at Wembley, I will be rooting for them to fail - whether or not that's fair.