‘I sat in his seat’: Southampton’s Tonda Eckert on sauna beers with Klose and his unlikely career path

Youthful manager on his colourful journey as a coach from Germany and Sunday’s FA Cup fifth round trip to Fulham 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