Treachery is rife – even Berti had his spies on prize
You’d think Pedro Caixinha would have enough battles to fight without turning the Premiership into a cold war.
But the talk last week of dressing-room treachery, dirty rats and saboteurs trading secrets from within has taken things to a new level.
It’s also a great chance to share some tales of actual football espionage.
Pedro could have a point if a story from 1986, involving former Scotland boss Berti Vogts, is anything to go by.
Scotland and West Germany were in the same group at the World Cup in Mexico.
Prior to that clash the Scots, under Alex Ferguson, were concerned about the fitness of Gordon Strachan.
Franz Beckenbauer was desperate to discover whether or not Strachan was ready to face his side and handed assistant Vogts a fact-finding mission.
On the day before the game the Scots trained in the stadium but Fergie insisted on having the session held behind closed doors.
Armed guards were assigned with the task of preventing access to all and sundry – especially any German spies.
Vogts was turned away but noticed Coca-Cola vendors were being allowed in to set up their stalls for the next day.
He bribed his way in with a signed German jersey as a swap for a vendor’s red jacket and cap.
The bold Berti wheeled in his stall – and two hours later Beckenbauer was told that a fit and eager Strachan would face Germany.
“That’s why I am the Coca-Cola Man,” said Vogts.
Closer to home, last season Aberdeen boss Derek McInnes insisted Jonny Hayes was fit to play in a crucial secondleg Europa League qualifier in Maribor. He continued to peddle the same line to the press in the hours leading up to the game.
But the cat was out the bag when the player failed to board the team plane. It was only on arrival in Slovenia that the flush-faced Dons boss swore the Scottish media to silence.
Giving the game away can have serious consequences.
Rugby League side Sale Sharks recently terminated the contract of Tom Arscott after an investigation that looked at whether the winger had leaked team information to his brother Luke who played for Bristol.
Dirty tricks are par for the course at most grounds.
The away dressing-room at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light has been pained a horrid blue and yellow that, according to interior design specialists, has the effect of making players “cold and ill”.
The visitors’ dressing room at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge even has mirrors designed to give the Blues an upper hand. Positioned by the door, they are designed to be significantly narrower than usual to give the impression of players being smaller than they actually are before a game.
Pedro’s accusation that dark arts are at play is nothing compared to former Tottenham defender Gheorghe Popescu who admitted being an informer for the Communist Romanian government’s secret police in the 1980s.
He confessed he wrote notes on team-mates and colleagues while playing for Universitatea Craiova after signing a document vowing to ‘defend the national interests’ of the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Caixinha can dish out fines and banish the guilty to the reserves – but for Ceausescu? It was death by firing squad.