The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, November 1

Hi, folks!

I always miss the games that Fernando Llorente scores in. It really adds to the feeling of elusiveness I attach to a good Llorente performance.

Ramble of the Day

Speaking of Fernando Llorente scoring, one of the facts of that event is that Tottenham get to post a gif to celebrate the occasion. That’s not a totally unique thing across football teams, but each set of gifs is pretty unique. Llorente being Llorente, his specific gif is also pretty different from the pack.

There’s a comment to be made about Llorente shaving his great beard for picture day, but that’s a conversation for another time. The truly weird part of this gif comes right at the beginning, when he stretches his arms wide, like he’s either spreading his wings or open his arms wide for a hug he wasn’t getting. The second makes more sense, but it still is just a weird look. That made me wonder what the other goal celebration gifs looked like. (Note: I could only scroll back as far as September 15, so this is all I got from that.)

Eric Dier and Christian Eriksen both ended up with a similar wingspan celebration gif, to varying degrees of success. Eriksen’s is probably the best, since there’s a smoothness to it, and there’s something more natural about his, compared to the other two. Dier, meanwhile, probably has the worst one of the wingspan gifs. It’s a little bit awkward, and not as artistic as Llorente’s spread.

Son Heung-min comes with a classic and enjoyable gif. Is there anything about him that isn’t instantly likable?

Dele also brings a classic celebration — that is, a classic Dele celebration. This is the end of my analysis, because I have no problem with Dele being Dele.

Harry Kane’s celebration gif is well executed. Enjoyable and realistic, almost everything about it moves cleanly and smoothly. That is probably expected, since the guy celebrates goals more often than most.

Finally, my personal favorite is Érik Lamela’s. He announces himself perfectly in the opening shot, really setting up the celebratory nature of the event. A simple, classic, and purely joyous celebration follows to fully package an amuse-bouche of the Érik Lamela Experience.

tl;dr: Just looking at some gifs.

Links of the Day

English clubs will work with prisons to promote prisoner rehabilitation by offering them coaching and refereeing courses as a path to employment.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino hopes that the 2022 World Cup will be expanded to 48 teams.

A Spanish judge said Neymar could face up to six years of jail time for the fraud and corruption charges he faces regarding his transfer to FC Barcelona in 2013.

The NFL plans on hosting two matches at Spurs’ new stadium in 2019, increasing the number of games hosted in London to four from two.

Today’s longer read: Thomas Rogers reports on the financial motives behind the Borussia Dortmund team bus bombing in April 2017 for Bloomberg News