Saints Team At Villa Sets New Club International Landmark
Tuesday, 25th Nov 2014 12:29

Saints starting line up at Aston Villa in Monday night's 1-1 draw set a fantastic new landmark for Southampton Football Club.

This has been a season of first's for Saints and of records broken, but perhaps the most significant one and a mark of just how we have progressed has been in the fact that Monday night's starting line up was the first time that Southampton Football Club have put out a complete team of full Internationals.

Jose Fonte's cap for Portugal last week made this possible and all of that starting XI had been involved with their countries over the International week with the exception of Ryan Bertrand who has not been involved with England since winning his first cap when a Chelsea player, although surely that will soon change given the form he is in.

This is a wonderful achievement and should not be underestimated as to the significance, there cannot be that many teams in the Premier League who are able to be able to do this.

On the bench we still had some full caps in reserve and when Mayuka came on for Mane it was still a case of all the side being full internationals the balance only being upset when Jack Cork came on for Shane Long in the final minute.

But Koeman also had Yoshida and Florin Gardos in reserve who of course play regularly for their countries.

The day isnt far off when we perhaps not only have a full starting XI with full caps but indeed the whole subs bench, indeed we could technically make it a full bench of subs with full International honours on top of Monday's starting XI if we recalled our loan players back, at Villa we had 14 full internationals on duty, out injured we had Steven Davis and Jay Rodriguez, meaning that if we recalled Osvaldo and Artur Boruc from their loan spells it could be a full starting line up plus an entire subs bench, all of whom have been capped in the past season or so.

Oh and that would still mean no place on the bench for Gaston Ramirez.

Photo: Action Images

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