The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Monday, October 29

Hi, everyone.

I’d like to open today’s Hoddle by wishing this great space’s namesake, Glenn Hoddle, a full recovery.

Ramble of the Day

We all watch sports a little bit differently in private. Maybe you shout more at your television, or you check your social media more. I have to imagine that one thing in that many people do while watching sports, and in particular their favorite teams, in private is calling the players certain names. Not inappropriate names, but nicknames that come from extremely inside jokes that only you and a select group of friends understand, and that probably no one else could understand if you explain it.

In the Cartilage Free Captain writers’ room, we all like to call Paulo Gazzaniga “Gazzinga.” As I have mentioned at least once in a ramble, it’s because a commentator during preseason called him that and it just stuck. I even call him Gazzinga sometimes out loud (in private with my sisters only, of course) and also once accidentally Googled “Paulo Gazzinga.” It is a pretty good nickname, after all.

One player who my sisters and I, and some members of the writers’ room, have a number of nicknames for is Jan Vertonghen. When making jokes, we’ll pronounce his first name like the name of the The Brady Bunch daughters. Then, there’s another name that we’ve come up with along the way, though I’m not sure where from. We will change the pronunciation of Vertonghen’s last name so it sounds more like Ver-tang-en, something my younger sister does more often than I do, but not terribly often regardless. A similar nickname exists for Harry Kane, who is very occasionally called Harriet by my younger sister.

We’ve also managed to assign a few nicknames to random players over the years, regardless of whether or not we like the player. We have a habit of making nicknames from commentator mispronunciations, like Sporting Kansas City player Graham Zusi, who was once called “Graham Susie.” Additionally, we’ll be happy to change people’s names to a variation of their given first name, somewhat like Vertonghen. My younger sister will call the Columbus Crew’s Wil Trapp “Bil Trapp,” for example. I can’t think of any more, but there are probably several i’m missing.

Naturally, they’d all sound pretty dumb around other people, but I happened to just tell other people, so I guess you all will be the judges of that.

tl;dr: Weird nicknames for athletes.

Links of the Day

Leicester City has confirmed that owner and chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha died in the helicopter crash following the team’s 1-1 draw with West Ham on Saturday, along with the four other people on board.

Glenn Hoddle is “responding well to treatment” after having a heart attack, per a spokesman.

Mauricio Pochettino admitted he had the “worst feeling” about Tottenham since joining the club, and believes the club needs to rearrange priorities.

Today’s longer read: Stuart James on Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s celebration of players and supporters in his time as Leicester owner for The Guardian
Supplemental reading: Jacob Steinberg on the reaction of Leicester fans who visited the King Power Stadium to pay tribute to the victims of the helicopter crash, also for The Guardian