Crazy Shit is Afooty

Today's English Football League Championship final is famously known as "the richest game in football". The winner of the contest between Hull City and Middlesborough stands to gain as much as $300 million next year as a member of the Premier League; the loser heads back to the relative coal mine and has to grind out another 46 league matches to try again for promotion.

That kind of windfall might tend to cause a team to do something really fucking stupid, as it turns out.

Middlesborough didn't expect to find themselves in today's match after they fell, 2-1, to Southampton to lose the two-legged Championship playoff semifinals by the same score. Southampton were installed as favorites to defeat Hull City and rejoin the Premier League in 2026-27.

Instead, the Black Cats were sanctioned by the EFL for spying on Middlesborough's training sessions in advance of the teams' May 12 match, and their victory over 'borough was vacated. Really sophisticated tradecraft on display, as you can see below (this is not a joke - that's really and truly a Southampton intern named Will Salt filming Middlesborough training on an iPhone from behind a tree):

The New York Times has a terrific tick tock of the events surrounding this entirely new version of Spygate, which are both corrupt and pathetic. Southampton's players, many of whom were due for 40% pay raises had they qualified for Premier League play, are contemplating a class-action suit against their employer. Southampton manager Tonda Eckert, a German, has claimed ignorance of the fact that such chicanery is illegal, saying that it's commonplace on the Continent. Other Championship sides, including Wrexham, are also discussing legal action, because it turns out Southampton did the same thing on multiple occasions earlier in the season, which could've impacted the standings even before the playoffs. It is, as the pundits say, a proper cockup.

No word from the UK regarding Connor Stalions' pending interest in the round sort of football, though that would make a bizarro Ted Lasso plot twist.