The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Monday, November 12

Hi, Hoddlers!

Another Hoddle from a press box! Another update that probably means nothing to you!

Ramble of the Day

As Tottenham players were shaking the hands of the referees and Crystal Palace players on Saturday, I saw something that was a bit unusual to me. It was Hugo Lloris in white and blue, wearing the team’s track white track jacket with the navy sound wave detail on the sleeves.

My first thought was that it was a unique goalkeeper kit, and that I didn’t think that I’d eer seen him in white before. Then I realized that it wasn’t a goalkeeper kit, and that I hadn’t seen Lloris in white before because he never wears it on the field, especially for Tottenham. Kit manufacturers aren’t going to make a kit for a goalkeeper that’s one of the primary colors of the primary kit. Then I just thought it was weird that he was wearing white; nice, but weird.

It made me think about the cognitive dissonance that happens as a reaction to a goalkeeper not wearing bright or distinct colors. Black is probably the only exception to the bright colors rule currently that doesn’t automatically make a goalkeeper look distinct, but a little bit wrong. Lloris has donned black a few times this season, and he hasn’t looked weird to me.

The pink on the sleeves probably helps a lot, though, as does the neon yellow of the sponsor, Nike logo, and Spurs crest. I like the diea of the bright colors on the black, but I’m not so sure the yellow and the pink go with each other, but that’s me going off on a tangent. (Like that’s stopped me before, but it will today.)

It’s amazing what a regular jersey will do to your mind, though. Seeing something unusual is one thing, and your mind understanding that is rather normal, but I find that mind overreacts just a little bit to a goalkeeper in a jersey for an outfielder. It’s weird, sure, but we’ve all seen weirder things than a goalkeeper wearing an outfielder’s jersey!

After all, it’s not like goalkeepers look bad when they wear the jerseys that are never assigned to them. In fact, it’s actually rather impressive that they almost all look good in bright colors. Maybe, though, we just get used to them in bright colors that we have no choice but to think they look good in bright colors. It would be fun to test this theory, by putting players people don’t know in outfielders’ kits and goalkeepers’ kits and seeing if we can guess which position they play and if all goalkeeper are naturally suited to brighter colors.

tl;dr: Hugo Lloris in white? That’s weird...

Links of the Day

The French Football Federation will look into Paris Saint-Germain racially profiling youth players, while the French league of human rights has filed a lawsuit against the club.

Pep Guardiola said he confronted Raheem Sterling on the pitch because of a case of showboating towards the end of Sunday’s Manchester derby.

Today’s longer read: Jack Pitt-Brooke interviews former Tottenham midfielder Jamie O’Hara on hitting lows and finding happiness in the sport for The Independent