The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Monday, April 9

Hi, Hoddlers!

I had a dream the other night that I forgot to write the Hoddle three days in a row and you all wondered what was going on. (I guess it was more like a nightmare.) Thankfully, I have not forgotten today.

Ramble of the Day

I saw this tweet last night from Bobby Boswell, a now-retired MLS veteran, last night and, of course, laughed.

If you could not figure it out, she is talking about Zlatan Ibrahimovic. I love that she thought Zoloft, the medication, was his name at first, though it could have just been a slip of the tongue. She was obviously much closer the second time. Plus, Zoltan is a real name for people!

She is just one of the many to fudge up Ibrahimovic’s name lately. His arrival to America made local news in the Los Angeles area, but the name was a bit of a stumbling block for some broadcasters, like this ABC news reporter. (This was seriously the only video I could find last night.)

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, I must admit that I have some sympathy for these people. Why? Because I have a similar (and embarrassing) tale of my own.

When I go on road trips with my sisters, we play this game that we invented on a road trip almost seven years ago. It has no name; we simply refer to it as “the game” whenever we’re getting ready to play. One of us kicks it off by saying the name of a footballer — for example, let’s say Harry Kane. The next person has to then come up with a footballer whose first name begins with either of the letters that the previous footballer’s names end with, in this case “y” or “e.” You cannot repeat names, making the game more challenging the longer you play.

We were playing this game a few years ago on a quick trip to I Don’t Know Where, Pennsylvania, and it was my turn to say a name. One of the letters I had to play with was “s,” but I was having a tough time coming up with a player whose name started with the letter as we’d run through a number of them already. Eventually, I said, very seriously, Susan Tadic, and pronounced it the way you would pronounce Dusan (and not the way you would pronounce Susan normally). My younger sister promptly yelled, “Susan?!,” pronouncing it the normal way, and we all burst into laughter. I knew his name was Dusan, but I slipped up. I eventually ended up finding another name, but I have never lived it down. We now call him Susan, somewhat affectionately but mostly to poke fun at me. (I earned it!)

tl;dr: Zoltan Zibrahimovic and Susan Tadic are not footballers (at least I don’t think so).

Links of the Day

Tunisia’s Youssef Msakni picked up a knee ligament injury over the weekend and will miss the World Cup.

Harry Kane still thinks he can win the Golden Boot, even though he’s four goals behind Mohamed Salah.

Sporting Lisbon coach Jorge Jesus denied the club president has suspended 19 of the team’s players.

Today’s longer read, as recommended by my younger sister: Richard Fitzpatrick on Luka Modric and the controversial perjury trial in Croatia for Bleacher Report