WEMBLEY STADIUM — “Spygate!” a Middlesbrough fan shouts at his mates on Wembley Way while half-hidden in a bush.
The group crack up, the surrealness of this day translating to giddy excitement, as though they’re all up past their bedtime, their parents yet to spy the clock.
Spygate, aka one man behind a tree with his phone, is the reason Boro are here to face Hull City in this Championship play-off final and why Southampton are not.
There has never been a build-up like this in 40 years of the play-offs. “Challenging and overshadowed by events off the pitch,” is how English Football League chair Rick Parry put it in the match programme.
Quite.
