During a lull in the recent Germany v England friendly international, I took to musing about the German left back for the evening – Jonas Hector of Köln. Typically for me this was less about his performance on the pitch and more about the provenance of his family name, one which older England followers will recognise from the 1970s when Derby Country striker Kevin Hector represented his country on a couple of occasions.

BTLM’s regular Elevens series likes to pick wilfully offbeat subjects and this offered up a challenge to see if I could put together a team based upon the Hector premise – namely that a player only qualifies for this fantasy selection if he has been an English or German international AND a player with exactly the same family name has also represented the other nation.

With some input from BTLM’s ever-lively Twitter following I managed to put together a full team plus three substitutes that carry the family names of Stein, Butt, Hunt, Forster, Peters and Hector. The only small liberty taken was overlooking a missing umlaut on Fraser Forster, but hey, who hasn’t played fast and loose with an umlaut at some point in their life.

Read below the statistical information about our selections.

1. Uli STEIN – 3 West German caps (1983-86)
2. Bernd FÖRSTER – 33 West German caps (1979-84)
3. Jonas HECTOR – 12 German caps (2014- present)
4. Nicky BUTT – 39 England caps (1997-2004)
5. Karlheinz FÖRSTER – 81 West German caps (1978-86)
6. Martin PETERS – 67 England caps (1966-74)
7. Brian STEIN – 1 England cap (1984)
8. Aaron HUNT – 3 German caps (2009-2013)
9. Kevin HECTOR – 2 England caps (1973)
10. Roger HUNT – 34 England caps (1962-69)
11. Erwin STEIN – 1 West German cap (1959)

Subs:

12. Fraser FORSTER – 5 England caps (2013-present)
13. Hans-Jörg BUTT – 4 German caps (2000-2010)
14. Wolfgang PETERS – 1 West German cap (1957)