As 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 fan mile,” 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.
“There is more to football than x’s and o’s, more than just tactics, and if you don’t understand the essence behind it all, then you’re missing the most essential part of the game. He [Urs] would bring in the national instrument of Ghana and that was the way he would present the team. If you see the Africa Cup of Nations, they dance all the way to the changing rooms. Where does that come from, what does that mean? It’s the reason I could never work in Africa because I would be sent back after the first day.”
Eckert laughs. So, has he sent any of his staff along the King’s Road to get a feel for Fulham before visiting Craven Cottage in the FA Cup fifth round on Sunday? “No, but you need to grasp Fulham a little bit. Where is Fulham located in London? What is the atmosphere in the stadium? What do the fans expect? How do they deal with pressure? Is it enough if they win or do they also need to play nice football? Is it a hostile environment? I believe the more you understand that about a club and a nation, and for a nation even more so, I think it helps you know how to approach a game.”
At the Euros in 2012, Mario Balotelli, who Eckert coached at Genoa last season, scored twice to send Italy to the final at Germany’s expense. “Everyone knows the image,” Eckert says of Balotelli’s iconic celebration, when he stood shirtless, tensing every muscle. Eckert recalls chatting to Balotelli at Genoa: “A lot of his family grew up in Germany so all speak German, but he doesn’t, so he said: ‘You can talk to everyone else in my family instead.’ He was a lot more settled than he was earlier in his career.”
Eckert, who joined Southampton as their under-21s head coach last summer, turned 33 in January and has packed a lot in. His first taste of the Championship came at Barnsley in 2020-21, when Gerhard Struber brought him to Yorkshire as his assistant. Struber exited two months later but Eckert stayed and made the playoffs under Valérien Ismaël. Before that, he worked with Ibrahima Konaté while coaching RB Leipzig’s under-19s and Jamal Musiala while assistant coach with Bayern Munich’s under-17s, where his sidekick was Klose. Eckert’s face lights up at the mention of Germany’s record goalscorer.
“I realised the more exposed people were from their career, the more humble they actually are and the more they just look for normality, they just want you to be normal and have normal conversations,” says Eckert, who worked as an assistant to two more World Cup winners at Genoa, Alberto Gilardino and Patrick Vieira.
And nothing says normality like enjoying a beer at Bayern’s training‑ground sauna beside Klose. “They [the staff] set me up at first because he was very keen on where he sat in the sauna and, of course, nobody told me so I sat in his seat by accident and then they were taking the piss out of me when he came in. It was a gift to soak up the experiences they made, but I also felt that they appreciated that I came from a completely different background, which might sound strange, because you come from a different angle of approaching things.”
At the outset, Eckert scouted for fourth-tier Fortuna Köln and coached FC Köln’s under-17s. He also worked on the Fifa video game franchise, for the developer EA Sports at its hub in Cologne. “I had to make sure the ratings were right. I was at Köln at the time so all of the first-team players came to me and asked me to put theirs up a little bit. I had some friends in the game, so I tried to convince them to raise their ratings. I am quite close with John Brooks, now a centre-back at Hertha Berlin, so I was trying to get his up a little bit.” Was he tempted to give his friends a dodgy hairstyle? “You always had to ask a line manager for approval,” Eckert says, laughing.
Since Eckert became Southampton’s head coach in November, succeeding Will Still, only the leaders, Coventry, and Ipswich have accrued more Championship points. It has given Saints hope of fulfilling their objective of returning to the Premier League at the first attempt. They have scored a league-high 44 goals under Eckert, despite selling their top scorer Adam Armstrong to Wolves last month. Only Fabian Hürzeler, Eckert’s fellow German along the south coast at Brighton, is a younger manager in English football.
Unlike Hürzeler, Eckert had no real playing career, but for academy football at Union Berlin. “I had to make a decision about whether to push [to become a professional] and I was intelligent enough to realise that I was not good enough so I had to find a different path,” Eckert says in his office, this his first major interview since taking charge. “When I was in the under-15s at Hertha Zehlendorf, I played as a winger, and Antonio Rüdiger also played as a winger, so we competed for the same position. Then I played as a No 6 or as a centre-back.”
If Saints are to win promotion, they will almost certainly have to do it via the playoffs, as two years ago. They are seventh, four points off sixth-placed Wrexham with 11 games of the regular season to play.
“I think we are ready to take the last steps.” Eckert says. “Sometimes it is better to chase than being chased, eh? But obviously you need to get over the line at some point … We just need to stay on the gas.”
