Bone Idle Gossip: Off to the Eastern Bloc (is that the bit near the Milton End?) and beyond

This week’s challenge came from Scott Harris, who asked for a Baltic Pompey XI, and Graham Dubber, who wanted a Southern Hemisphere XI.

I must confess geography isn’t my strong point (I thought the Eastern Bloc was the section nearest the Milton End) so I to had look up which countries could be described as Baltic.

I also thought the Baltic Sea was just a tad bigger than Baffins Pond but it turns out it’s ginormous and has about 28 countries around it – yet the only three nations officially called ‘Baltic states’ are Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. So I was, shall we say, relaxed about which nationalities were allowed into this XI.

Ant Coombes, fast becoming an expert at meeting these challenges, admitted: “It’s a shame Denmark isn’t a bit further east, and the Eastern Bloc isn’t a bit further north – then we’d have no problem.”

Even so he named seven players: Mart Poom, Petri Pasanen, Markus Heikkinen, Sebastien Olzsar, Mathias Svensson, Emmanuel Olisadebe and Sven Andreasson.

The Southern Hemisphere proved a chunky catchment area and threw up a couple of good XIs. From Matt Hills came: Cisak, Foxe, Mokoena, Viafara, Panapoulos, Boateng, Muntari, Miglioranzi, D’Alessandro, Lualua, Benjani.

Ant Coombes had a go at this one, too, and came up with a good side, including that old fans’ favourite Hamilton Thorp.

It read: Sasa Ilic, Hayden Foxe, Aaron Mokoena, Mike Panapoulos, Sulley Muntari, Stefani Miglioranzi, Andres D’Alessandro, Benjani, John Aloisi, Lomana Lualua, Hamilton Thorp.

(*Until the next one.)

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