Southampton FC Facts – Must-Read for Football Crazies

Southampton Football Club is more than a hundred and thirty years old and started out as the church football team. At that time, it was known as St. Mary’s Young Men’s Association. It had been in the Dell till 2001 and later shifted to St. Mary’s Stadium. But these are probably known by almost every Southampton football club fan. However, not every fan knows about other quirky yet interesting facts about the club. Here are a few fun Southampton FC facts for fans to adore the club a bit more.

·         The football club is popularly known as ‘The Saints’ because of their past of being the church football club.

·         Everyone knows the popular sports tune “When the Saints Go Marching In” and the Saints’ fan have made this tune the club’s anthem. Since Saints is the nickname of the club, the lyrics of the tune also go unchanged.

·         There is also an interesting fact when it comes to the club crest. For a long time, Southampton used the city’s crest as the club’s crest. In the 70’s, the club arranged for a competition and all the fans were asked to submit crest designs. The winner’s design has been used as the club’s crest from then on. However, a few changes were made due to copyright issues.

·         The Portsmouth FC is the arch rival of the Southampton Fc. Though this is known by all passionate fans of the South Coast Derby, what they might not know is that this rivalry has been continuing since time immemorial due to maritime affairs.

·         The Southampton football Club is one of the founders of the Premier League and helped in the League’s establishment in 1992-23. However, the club was found struggling in the league the next few seasons.

·         Southampton has been the runners up of The Football Association Cup, one of the most prestigious titles, thrice in the years 1900, 1902 and 1903 while they have successfully won the title in 1976.

·         Southampton FC has been the six times winner of the Southern League Football title.

·         The club’s home ground, the St. Mary’s Stadium, is one of the very few stadiums in Europe that fits in to the UEFA’s four star category.

·         Fans might not believe this but there was a time when the Saints were made to shift their home matches to the home ground of their arch rival Portsmouth FC during the World War 2 due to a bomb landing on the Dell.

·         All the fans will agree that in the UK Soccer community, Southampton FC is a club with huge potentials that is backed by a family and has traditional values.

·         The Southampton FC academy has a phenomenal record of producing excellent young talents and has a number of star players graduating from there like Chris Baird, Theo Walcott, Wayne Bridge etc.

These Southampton FC Facts show the roots of different strengths of the club. Everyone will agree that the club’s true strength still lies in the fact that they have a passionate fan base supporting them.

Golden goals promise to bring such interesting facts to the football lovers across the world so that they can always enrich their knowledge about the most popular game of the globe.