In a wide-ranging interview, Solak insisted he had been unaware of the spying plot, revealing he only found out about it when the news broke last month on social media.
“I actually learned from X. I sent a message: ‘What the hell is this?’
“Even people I talked to at the highest level of the club didn’t have a clue what was going on. They really thought it was a joke.”
Describing the punishment Southampton received as “ridiculous”, Solak tried to downplay the seriousness of the club’s cheating.
“Yes, we tried to obtain an information that was not legally allowed,” he said. “OK, what you do with this information and how you use it on the pitch, is a different thing. And what is the direct influence of this information on the pitch?
“On the other side, we can see on almost every game, players diving, trying to basically get a penalty or get a red card. That is not fair. And it’s very simple to call this cheating because they know what they’re doing, it’s much, much more direct influence on the game and the result than whatever we did.
“I’m not saying that what we did is right. I agree with the league that they want to stop it once for all. I just think that they are not treating every offence equally.”
Asked how he felt about the club staff, other than Eckert, who were aware of the spying, Solak said, “This whole thing was happening within the environment of our analysts.
“I think we have a couple of guys that are foreign analysts, so for them you could say probably that they didn’t have a clue that this was against the rules.
“And then we have probably five or six British analysts. How come they either didn’t know or they didn’t tell? I don’t know. But this is something that will be additional soul-searching for us… I am definitely very focused that we come to the understanding of this because this is the only way it will never happen again.”
