Southampton: Saints to play Feyenoord in 2019/20 pre-season friendly

Southampton have added a friendly with Eredivisie side Feyenoord to their 2019/20 pre-season schedule.

Saints announced earlier today that Ralph Hasenhuttl and his squad will travel to their opponents’ De Kuip stadium for the clash on Sunday 28th July and a kick-off time of 1:30pm UK time.

This game adds another test for a potentially new look Saints side in their increasingly busy pre-season.

A home friendly with newly promoted Bundesliga side 1.FC Koln will take place the weekend before the beginning of the 2019/20 Premier League campaign.

Trips to Austria – and a meeting with SCR Altach – and Ireland are also included, whilst Saints also face Chinese Super League outfit Guangzhou R&F in Macau.

Feyenoord are likely to provide a stern test when they welcome Saints next month.

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They fight for the Dutch Eredivisie title on a consistent basis with the likes of PSV Eindhoven and Ajax, and have won two KNVB cups and a league title in the past four seasons.

Strong showings from their rivals at the top of the table last season saw them settle in to a league finish of third after falling 18 points behind.

There has been a previous friendly meeting between Feyenoord and Saints too as the two sides met ahead of the 2015/16 campaign.

It was Ronald Koeman’s visiting side to De Kuip that ran out 3-0 winners on that day thanks to goals from Graziano Pelle, Maya Yoshida and Juanmi.

The past links between the clubs from the past four to five years are also strong.

Ronald Koeman joined Saints as manager in 2014 following Mauricio Pochettino’s departure and had left his role at Feyenoord the previous season.

Graziano Pelle also joined during that pre-season and had joined his former boss at St Mary’s in a £10m move from the Rotterdam club.

The Saints visiting side will look a lot different to the last time they played at De Kuip though and they could feature a number of new signings with a busy summer expected.