The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Friday, April 13

Hi, all!

Shall we?

Ramble of the Day

I was getting today’s Hoddle started, filling in the title and picking out a picture. I usually sort the images by date, and for the last few days, the pictures from last week’s match against Stoke unsurprisingly popped up first. However, this is now the first image that shows up:

Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images

This is not even the only one. Here’s one that was made ahead of last year’s FA Cup semifinal against Chelsea:

Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images

I have to ask: Why?

Let’s go to the first one. Why did they have to cut off every part of their heads other than their faces? That is an angle of a person’s face that almost no one wants other people staring at in picture form, and also makes for a very awkward photograph. Those pictures of Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola would almost certainly looked better if the person responsible for this zoomed out a bit. The second image, of Pochettino and Antonio Conte, does a better job of making the picture less awkward. That, though, does not mean it is genuinely better.

The key point that both of these images, and the other ones like it, fail to realize is that these photos are unconvincing and pointless. Why did they feel the need to photoshop images of managers to look like they’re staring at each other? We all know this did not happen. The photoshop job is not convincing, either. It doesn’t even look like this stare-down happened! Plus, it’s hard to make it so that they’re clearly making eye contact.

There are alternatives, like when coaches like each other:

Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images

There’s also the type of image where they’re clearly competing against each other:

Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

If all else fails, you can just do a simple job that isn’t alluding to anything that doesn’t exist.

Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images

There are ways to make life less complicated!

tl;dr: I have opinions on managerial photoshops.

Links of the Day

Mauricio Pochettino talked about the reaction to the Harry Kane-Christian Eriksen goal appeal at his press conference yesterday.

CONMEBOL has asked FIFA to allow 48 teams to compete at the 2022 World Cup.

Today’s longer read: Suzanne Wrack talks to two members of the Jordanian women’s national team about qualifying for the 2019 World Cup and playing matches on Kilimanjaro and on the shores of the Dead Sea for The Guardian