English soccer club Southampton could lose its Premier League spot and about $270 million due to spying on opponents.
The team comes from the south coast of England. exiled Tuesday’s Division 2 Championship play-off final after admitting to filming another club’s practice session without permission.
The play-off final has been dubbed the world’s richest one-off soccer match, with the winning team expected to earn at least £200 million ($270 million) in future Premier League matches.
This is not the first example of espionage in the world of sports, where teams try to gain an advantage over their rivals.
Others include:
New England Patriots receive second sanction
The Patriots didn’t learn their lesson.
In 2007, the Patriots were caught using video to record the New York Jets’ signals during an NFL game. Coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 and the Patriots were fined $250,000 and lost a first-round draft pick.
Twelve years after the episode widely known as Spygate the team approved A week before the Bengals played the Patriots, a video crew reportedly filmed the Cincinnati Bengals sideline during a game against the Cleveland Browns.
The Patriots were fined $1.1 million and also forfeited their third-round pick in the 2021 draft.
Canada’s Olympic drone spying scandal
Spying was also carried out when Canada’s defending champion women’s team participated in the Olympics. flew a drone We covered New Zealand’s closed-door practice session ahead of the team’s opening match at the 2024 Paris Games.
Canadian coach Bev Priestman was suspended and removed from the Olympic team, and two staff members were sent home.
Also considered FIFAfined Canada Soccer $228,000 and awarded the team six points in the Olympic Games. Canada still advanced, but lost in the quarterfinals, and Priestman and his staff were suspended for one year. The governing body accused Canada of “aggressive conduct and violation of the principles of fair play.”
2017 baseball champion arrested for sign stealing
The Houston Astros used more basic technology in the sign-stealing scandal that rocked Major League Baseball in 2020: cameras, television monitors, and most famously, trash cans.
MLB investigation That year, it was revealed that the Astros had used a scheme to steal signals relayed between opposing catchers and pitchers during their campaign to win the 2017 World Series. During home games, a center field camera zoomed in on the catcher and fed footage to a monitor near Houston’s dugout. Teammates watched the catcher’s signs on a monitor and tapped a trash can to let the batter know whether the next pitch was a fastball or an off-speed ball.
Manager AJ Hinch and General Manager Jeff Luhnow. launched with radioactive falloutand former Astros bench coach Alex Cora, who also managed the Boston Red Sox. Cora was later rehired by Boston, and Hinch is now the manager in Detroit. No players were penalized, and the Astros remained the 2017 champions. many fans Display with an asterisk.
The scandal prompted MLB to accelerate efforts to implement technology to prevent other forms of sign stealing, resulting in the approval of the PitchCom system for use in 2022. Currently, catchers call pitches by pressing a button on a remote control attached to a wristband or shin guard that sends an audio signal to a device in the pitcher’s hat.
McLaren fined $100 million over F1 scandal
In the wake of the 2007 spying scandal, McLaren formula 1 The team paid a $100 million fine.
That year, as McLaren and Ferrari drivers battled for the title on the track, details emerged that McLaren staff had access to confidential technical information about Ferrari’s car designs.
One of the unlikely heroes of the “Spygate” story was the manager of a British copy shop who spotted his customer, the wife of a McLaren engineer, making copies of documents and alerted Ferrari.
In the end, McLaren was handed a huge fine and stripped of all points in that year’s Constructors’ Championship. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen defeated McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to win the drivers’ title in the final race of the year.
Bielsa admits spying during Leeds season
News of the Southampton spying scandal took English football fans back to 2019. At the time, Leeds were managed by the great Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa. fined A reward of £200,000 ($259,000 at the time) for spying on one of the training sessions ahead of the Second Division Championship match between the Derby teams.
Bielsa accepted responsibility for having club employees spy on Derby, admitting in a detailed hour-long press conference that he had watched at least one of his opponents’ training sessions throughout the season.
In issuing the fine, the English Football League said Leeds’ conduct fell “well below the standards expected by the EFL and must never be repeated”.
Seven years later, Southampton committed a similar act and received a severe punishment.
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Associated Press sports writer James Ellingworth contributed to this article.
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