Another week, another taunt as Southampton continues to be dogged by its conduct in the “Spygate” soccer scandal.
This time, the jibes are coming from Wrexham’s famous co-owners.
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Ahead of a match between the teams in England’s second-tier Championship on Saturday, Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac released a video containing cutting references to a saga from last season that saw Southampton expelled from the promotion playoffs for unauthorized filming of opponents’ practice sessions.
“Today, for no particular reason, we want to talk about the importance of privacy,” Reynolds says after emerging from behind a tree, “specifically how to prevent spies from seeing what you’re doing.”
“Because there’s some things,” Mac continues, “that you just don’t want any other people to see.”
They went on to say this wasn’t just a message for Wrexham’s fans, but for those of Oxford, Ipswich, Middlesbrough and people everywhere.
This was a reference — as part of a promotion for Wrexham’s front-of-kit sponsor, Firefox — to the three teams that Southampton admitted to spying on last season.
The tree? Well, that’s a nod to a Southampton intern being spotted filming a Middlesbrough training session from behind a tree — the incident which sparked an investigation that revealed Southampton’s misbehavior.
That, in turn, led to Southampton getting thrown out of the playoffs — costing the team a chance of promotion to the lucrative Premier League — and receiving a four-point deduction to start this season. Its manager, Tonda Eckert, has since been charged by the Football Association with bringing the game into disrepute, with an arbitration panel saying it was “a contrived and determined plan from top down to gain a competitive advantage.”
Southampton’s opponents aren’t letting this lie.
Wrexham had a dig during the offseason. Upon discovering it would be playing Southampton in the last match before a hiatus for international matches, Wrexham posted details of the match with the caption: “Taking us into the international break,” accompanied by a spy emoji and a calendar reminder to “Check Training Ground” for unauthorized visitors in the days ahead of the game.
Southampton’s first game of the season was at Watford, whose fans baited Eckert’s team. Even Watford’s mascot got involved, standing behind one of the goalposts ahead of the game and poking its head out with a binocular gesture.
On Saturday, Bristol City fans sang a song that referred to Southampton as cheats in the opening seconds of their Championship game.
Later, Southampton supporters were heard singing: “We spy when we want, we spy when we want, we are Southampton, we spy when we want.”
After losing to Watford in their opener, Southampton has won four games and drawn the other two to climb to ninth place in the Championship standings, setting up another run to the playoffs — or even to the two automatic promotion spots — in a bid to return to the Premier League.
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See AP’s full soccer coverage here
