One of the first things Tonda Eckert wanted after taking charge at Southampton was for every member of staff, from the security guards to the dinner ladies, to smile a bit more. That’s easier said than done when morale around the place is quite so atrocious.
Two Premier League relegations in three years (one as the second-worst team in the competition’s history) and a botched start to your bid to get back there will do that to you.
So Eckert, promoted from the Under 21s initially as interim head coach to replace Will Still in November, made it his first job to try to change it.
He told everyone at the Staplewood training ground to give as much energy to the players as they could to, as one source puts it, ‘breathe a bit of life back into the place’.
It didn’t have to be much, even just an extra one per cent. Eckert, now permanent boss, who has Saints on an 11-game unbeaten run and has just been nominated for Championship manager of the month, is all about those one per cents.
Within weeks of taking charge, he hired German brain training company neuro11, who have also worked with Liverpool, to come in, strap electrodes to his players’ heads and analyse the run-ups of their penalty and free-kick takers: how long should they wait, how many strides should they take.
Tonda Eckert has Saints on an 11-game unbeaten run and has just been nominated for Championship manager of the month
Southampton were 21st in the Championship when Will Still was sacked – now they’re seventh and just three points off the play-offs
Eckert pestered club bosses to bring in extra psychologists and analysts. He holds frequent one-to-one meetings with players. Early in his tenure, he was eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at the training ground.
He frequently makes substitutions based not on whether Saints are chasing a winner or holding a lead, but at the exact minute the science and the data tells him to. This quirk does not always go down well with fans if they drop points.
He likes to watch at least three different matches of each opponent and instead of celebrating his side’s 5-1 victory over Charlton in December, he got home and immediately fired up a Leicester City game to prepare for their meeting three days later – in which Saints would come back from 3-0 down at half-time, and 3-1 in the 82nd minute, to win 4-3 in the 96th.
‘The level of detail he goes into is abnormal,’ says one source, who also referred to the German as a ‘control freak’. While Under 21s boss, Eckert would get club staff to send him all the match reports and interviews from games. He brings tactical dossiers on his opponents to press conferences.
What’s most remarkable about all this is that Eckert has only just turned 33 and in his first senior job in management.
‘He never stops, I love it,’ technical director Johannes Spors tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘Sometimes when managers are demanding, some of the staff think, “Yeah, give him a couple of weeks and he’ll calm down”. I don’t want him to calm down.’
It’s working. Southampton were 21st in the Championship when Still was sacked. Now they’re seventh and even though they dropped points at West Brom on Wednesday night, they are just three points off the play-offs with a pivotal clash at sixth-placed Wrexham to come next month.
Their FA Cup win over Fulham last weekend booked a meeting with Arsenal in the sixth round to keep alive dreams of silverware, on the 50th anniversary of their only major trophy win, the 1-0 victory over Manchester United. Eckert has reinforced the importance of that to his players in recent weeks.
Ross Stewart celebrates at Fulham last week after his late penalty sent Southampton into the FA Cup quarter-finals
This season marks 50 years since Southampton lifted the FA Cup, beating Manchester United 1-0 in the final – it remains the club’s only major trophy
The former Barnsley and Genoa assistant coach may be one of the youngest managers in Football League history but he’s also packed more into his formative years than most. And not just because he used to watch matches for the FIFA video game to make sure their players ratings were accurate (while bumping up the ones of his friends).
After giving up on playing at 17, he was working as an analyst for the German national side at Euro 2012 aged just 19, while studying at a sports university in Cologne. Two years later at the World Cup, he was preparing reports on Argentina, whom Germany beat in the final. He founded his own IT company in 2018, and coached at Cologne as well as the Red Bull clubs Salzburg and Leipzig.
Then it was Bayern Munich’s Under 17s, where he helped develop Jamal Musiala alongside Germany legend Miroslav Klose, one of three World Cup winners he’s learned from, and with whom he often shared a beer in the club sauna.
From there he found his way to Oakwell under Gerhard Struber in 2020, and made the play-offs under his successor Valerien Ismael before joining Genoa, learning from the other two World Cup winners, Alberto Gilardino and Patrick Vieira. Those who have followed him believe that learning from that trio, all from different countries and cultures, has given him a ‘complete’ tactical view of the game.
Eckert got the call from Genoa midway through a birthday party at his house and had to explain to his wife that he had to be on the training pitch in Italy at 11am the next day. He completed his Pro Licence in Italy, in Italian, despite not speaking a word of it when he arrived. Eckert qualified as best in class.
His time in Italy forged a will to win at all costs – ‘I would prefer to win an ugly game than lose a beautiful one,’ he said when appointed permanent boss in December.
Spors, who also worked with Eckert at Genoa, adds: ‘You would think that a young manager may need to find his way in a first-team environment but he never tried to find a way, he always made the way. He was never sitting in the train, he was always driving it.
‘The most important thing, and this makes a difference between coaches I’ve worked with, is he is motivated to win. He’s not just about playing Tonda Eckert football. Very often you see managers that are dogmatic. He’s dogmatic but in his desire to win. It doesn’t have to be this football or this playbook. Sometimes he chooses an ugly way to win when he knows this is just what we need.’
‘He’s dogmatic but in his desire to win. Sometimes he chooses an ugly way to win when he knows this is just what we need’
Southampton players react last season after their relegation was confirmed, on their way to the second-lowest points total (12) in Premier League history
Southampton have endured enough dogma in recent years, with Russell Martin’s unquenchable thirst for possession helping set Saints on their way to a pitiful 12 Premier League points last season.
Eckert’s predecessor Still arrived with a fine reputation as another bright young talent, yet he struggled to cope with the huge overturn of players in the summer and failed to win over the senior figures in the dressing room. Had things gone differently, it could have been Eckert who was given the job then anyway.
‘I was convinced Tonda would be a first-team manager when I hired him for the Under 21s (last July), I just didn’t know when and where,’ says Spors, who interviewed more than 10 alternatives before appointing Eckert in November. ‘I didn’t even know if it would be at Southampton.
‘You always have this question mark – “Is he ready?” – when he has never done it before, but I thought he was. I thought about it in the summer but I felt it was too early. After three months with the Under 21s, I could see he was ready. I think those three months were extremely important for him.’
Since taking interim charge in November, only Coventry, Ipswich, Millwall and Middlesbrough have picked up more points than Eckert’s Saints, and no one has scored more goals.
January helped trim the squad of dead wood. Signing a decent goalkeeper in Daniel Peretz on loan from Bayern Munich was key, with Gavin Bazunu shipped out on loan. Finally shifting to a back four after a blip of seven without a win calmed a few furious fans down.
Eckert, who spent his younger days as an analyst studying opponents’ cultures and traditions as much as tactics, was keen for Southampton to bring in ‘real men’ with life experience, who had lived and played in other countries.
For a few years, Saints have targeted young signings below the age of 22, but it was 30-year-old Canadian forward Cyle Larin, signed on loan from Mallorca in January, who netted the equaliser at the Hawthorns.
Cyle Larin gives his shirt to a fan after scoring a late equaliser to rescue a point at West Brom on Wednesday night
Since taking interim charge in November, only Coventry, Ipswich, Millwall and Middlesbrough have picked up more points than Eckert’s Saints, and no one has scored more goals
More than anything, Eckert’s transformation of a club that had won just four league games out of 51 all comes back to the details. The one per cents and the smiles.
‘Our standards were not high enough,’ says Spors. ‘That’s not a surprise when you get relegated as the second-worst team in Premier League history. Tonda was just able to raise the standards quickly.
‘I’m very data-driven but these are things that no metric can answer. You go into the training ground and you just feel the environment is different, more positive and more focused on high performance.
‘Southampton was an environment not focused enough on winning but more focused on other things. Now, it’s very clear – we are here to win.’
