The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Wednesday, June 6

Hello, everyone!

My older sister wanted me to issue a clarification: She does read the links sometimes.

Ramble of the Day

I have had a lifelong obsession with geography. It started when I was in third grade and my teacher randomly selected some cities around the world for us to study, which encouraged me to stare at a globe until I basically knew all of its contents. I won my school’s geography bee in fifth grade, which was probably my greatest achievement as a student. I would have pursued it further, but I did not find out until recently that Geography was a major at certain universities. (You have no idea how jealous I was when I found out Prince William majored in Geography at the University of St Andrews. I wonder if he was a good student.)

Anyway, that love has naturally extended to flags of the world. I basically collected my knowledge by drawing them for fun as an elementary school student, using the many colored pencils I was forced to buy as a young student. That is why, when my older sister sent me this tweet yesterday, I was very excited.

The feeling of discovery once I had properly taken a look at the image was one of joy, if I am to be honest. I had no idea, but it is pretty damn cool, at least to me, a geography nerd. I was familiar with the concept of the Union Jack being a combination of the flags of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, but I do not think that’s what Norway was going for here.

There is one flag that, possibly, is missing from this image, though. It is the flag of Monaco, which is almost identical to the flag of Indonesia.

Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

The difference is minor: the scaling of the bars of red and white is slightly bigger on Monaco’s flags. Depending on the scaling of the Norwegian flag, there might be room for both of them.

Simon Kuestenmacher, though, is not the only person to have noticed. Norwegian Air once used a similar image to advertise its airfares in 2015. I really love this ad.

This one clearly leaves out Indonesia and Monaco, possibly because Norwegian Air does not — or at least, did not at the time — fly there. Kuestenmacher then did us all a favor by adding Indonesia to the image. The more you know, folks!

tl;dr: Look at the pictures and enjoy the fun facts. Also, I really like flags.

Links of the Day

Aston Villa chief executive Keith Wyness has been suspended, and the club has missed a tax deadline and could be served with a winding-up petition.

Gianluigi Buffon and Roma fans will serve bans in next season’s European competition.

Sergio Ramos does not like being blamed for Liverpool’s injury woes during the Champions League final.

Mini transfer roundup: Manchester United have confirmed the signing of Fred from Shakhtar Donetsk; Stephan Lichtsteiner has officially moved from Juventus to Arsenal; Spurs academy product Ryan Fredericks has signed for West Ham

David Squires remembers the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal between Brazil and France in his latest cartoon.

Today’s longer read: Dean Jones of Bleacher Report interviews several people on how footballers handle fasting during Ramadan while still having to compete

Today’s even longer read: The Guardian has assembled a guide to every last player headed to Russia for the World Cup, 736 in total