‘I sat in his seat’: Southampton’s Tonda Eckert on sauna beers with Klose and his unlikely career path

Youthful manager on his colourful journey as a coach from Germany and Sunday’s FA Cup fifth round trip to Fulham

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s a 19-year-old studying at a sports university in Cologne, Tonda Eckert jumped at the chance to work for Germany as an analyst at Euro 2012. “It was nice, eh? Take somebody who doesn’t understand anything about the game and put them in,” says the now Southampton head coach, smiling as he recalls being thrust into an elite environment. He entered the same sphere as Joachim Löw, Hansi Flick and a team of greats: Miroslav Klose, Philipp Lahm, Toni Kroos, Manuel Neuer, the list goes on.

For the 2014 World Cup, Eckert was tasked with preparing a dossier on Argentina, who Germany overcame in the final. “The celebrations in Berlin were amazing, at the Fanmeile,” he says of the scenes at the fan zone by Brandenburg Gate. In the semi-finals, Germany humiliated the hosts Brazil, triumphing 7-1 in Belo Horizonte. “You know what Joachim Löw said at half-time? That he wouldn’t let anyone play in the final if they didn’t finish the second half with a sense of humility, because he knew how much it meant to Brazil, in Brazil.”

Eckert’s brief was not confined to opposition tactics. Urs Siegenthaler, a trusted Swiss confidant of Löw, put an emphasis on exploring beyond raw numbers. “At the time, and I think it’s quite unique, the German team tried not only [to research] tactically but to have a deep dive into the cultures of the nations they would come up against. That would mean going to, say, Ghana to understand the instruments they play, to understand how they grow up playing on the streets, what it means for the DNA of the team, and I was involved in that process.