We all love a good scandal as long as it’s relatively harmless. Admittedly most of us would be furious if someone else was trying to hack a computer system to obtain years of work we had done, but some interesting details are starting to emerge.
The Premier League doesn’t tend to have too many huge scandals that become national news and talked about for ages. Some details are emerging from a settlement payment made by Liverpool in 2013 which could’ve been football’s answer to the NFL spygate scandal involving the New England Patriots.
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We did come close when Marcelo Bielsa admitted to spying on Derby County last season, although that became a bit of a farce when he readily admitted what had happened. He even gave a press conference to show what he had learned as reported by The Guardian.
This potential Scandal involving Liverpool was reported by The Times. The report suggests that Liverpool hired some scouts from Man City and then the City scouting system was hacked repeatedly. It seems Liverpool agreed to pay £1m as a settlement in 2013.
The story even suggests City had to hire computer-espionage experts to find out if their system had been hacked. There don’t seem to be any obvious examples of Liverpool actually signing any players based on any knowledge obtained by hacking into the system, but it’s clear this could have been a gigantic scandal if things had escalated.
Those clubs who still file their scout reports on paper will be pleased to hear that not embracing new technology might be a good way to help guard any scouting secrets you have.