Before that Boxing Day clash at the Dell, more than 150,000 fixtures had been played across 111 years of English Football League history. In all of them, at least one British-born player has been included in the starting XI of each side.

Then came Vialli's selection. Dutchman Ed de Goey was in goal. Albert Ferrer (Spain), Frank Leboeuf (France), Emerson Thome (Brazil) and Celestine Babayaro (Nigeria) made up the back four.

Dan Petrescu (Romania), Didier Deschamps (France), Roberto di Matteo (Italy) and Gus Poyet (Uruguay) were in midfield, while Italian Gabriele Ambrosetti played off Norwegian forward Tore Andre Flo.

Chelsea club historian, Rick Glanvill picks up the story...

‘A little bit of history was made at the weekend,’ a Guardian editorial recorded for posterity, ‘when Chelsea Football Club fielded a team consisting entirely of foreign players – the first time in the life of the Premier League or its predecessors that this has happened.’

The newspaper noted that it had only been a matter of time before the west London club pinned up an all-overseas starting XI, as managing director, Colin Hutchinson, had famously described Chelsea as ‘a continental club playing football in England.’

‘The problem is working out what, if anything, fielding a team consisting of a Dutchman, a Spaniard, two Frenchmen, a Brazilian, a Uruguayan, a Nigerian, two Italians and a Norwegian might “mean”,’ the Guardian proposed.

Vialli’s men answered any questions whether a polyglot team might lack cohesion with a festive victory more emphatic than the 2-1 headline suggested. Both goals were scored by the Blues’ young Scandinavian forward, Tore Andre Flo. Kevin Davies, a Yorkshireman, netted the Saints’ late response.

At this rate, it joshed, ‘Chelsea will soon be accepting euros at the club shop,’ and that skipper Dennis Wise, absent on the day, might change his name to ‘Dennis Raisonnable’.

The fact that we played our home games at such a venerable old ancestral pile as Stamford Bridge reinforced the ‘Chelsea-ishness of it all’, as far as the writer was concerned.

During the course of the game, Vialli had brought on two promising young Englishmen: midfielder Jody Morris and left-back Jon Harley. Two more were sat among the substitutes: a certain John Terry and young forward Mark Nicholls, who famously netted in our 6-1 triumph over Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane.

Yet this was a day for Chelsea players born overseas to make an indelible mark on the England game.

And perhaps, to return to the Guardian's musing, this is what Boxing Day 1999 'meant' for Chelsea: a cosmopolitan club on the way to discovering its identity and, once again, blazing the trail for a new way of thinking in the English game.