‘Disgraceful’ – Emotional Hellberg on Southampton spying row after Middlesbrough are knocked out of play-offs

“This is our football and I think you should fight quite hard for it. I think Alex Neil (Millwall manager) said a very good thing after their game. He said, ‘I think I let people down after the game when we haven’t won.’

“That’s often the feeling a coach goes home with, because you think what I could control was the tactical aspect of the game. What I could control was helping my players more, and when you have done that and for a week or two weeks up to this game, put every second away from your family to watch Southampton every game, so you can to try to gain that advantage that we can actually get. When you go home to your family and say, ‘No, I’m not coming home, I’m going to see more games of them.’

“If we wouldn’t have caught that man who they sent five hours up, you would sit there and say well done in the tactical aspect of the game and I would go home and feel like I have failed in that aspect that I had to help my players with.

“When that is taken away from you in that way, when someone decides ‘no, we’re not going to watch every game, we will send someone instead’ and they film the session and see everything and hope they don’t get caught.

“I guess that was why he had the switch of clothes and all those things that I have seen on the CCTV, which I can say, because I know it happened. It breaks my heart in terms of all those things I believed in.

“I don’t care if there’s different rules in other countries. This is England. I think this is where football is the biggest thing. That’s my feelings about it. I think that is disgraceful to a colleague who you work against. It makes me very sad.”