Picture the setting. England has been liberated by the Soviet Union after the disastrous D-Day landings led to a Nazi invasion. East Anglia has been conquered as a puppet state under a socialist regime and has been subsequently declared ‘East England’. This new nation basically encapsulates the borders of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedford, Buckinghamshire, London and Kent and everything within to create a wonderful workers’ utopia, despite the forced communist politics and isolation from the West of the nation, which itself has become its own despicable capitalist ‘haven’. And the main impact of this, of course, is that there’d be two English national football teams to select. Among other things.
I will give a shout out to the book Liberation Square by Gareth Rubin as the inspiration for this article, a story in which the UK was divided into East and West by the Soviets and Americans after liberation from the Nazi forces. I haven’t actually read the book, nor do I know Rubin’s geographical parameters for what constitutes East and West in this reality, but I do know I won’t be having London divided into half-East, half-West, because after the hassle of Berlin a few articles back I’m going to assume this group of reds knew better than to mess everyone’s geography up for them. In any case, the map below should be able to explain these borders better than I ever could.
So, in a world of even more division than we live in now, where East Anglia saw a glorious workers’ revolution under the leadership of Harry Pollitt and his barmy army, just how different would 2 English national teams be today? It’s a question I’m sure no-one asked, but we’re going with it anyway. We’ll be creating two 23-man squads based solely on the players’ ability and where they were born.
Welcome to the new English Cold War. Click the flags below to learn more.
The Robot Soccer League 