The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Tuesday, September 4

Hi, all!

May we all get through this international break. (I’m sure we’ll be fine.)

Ramble of the Day

As some of you may have noticed yesterday, ESPN caught a lady dipping a chicken tender in her coke while eating lunch at the U.S. Open, which I saw multiple times because I was watching the U.S. Open on my television. Anyway, when my younger sister asked what I was rambling about for today’s Hoddle later in the day, she brought this up and then made a comment about how she, too, has had some weird eating habits.

She went on to list them, and I even took notes, but I will not share them all. My favorite of her weird eating habits, now completely in the past, came when she would eat chicken sandwiches — and only chicken sandwiches. Well known in the immediate family for loving chicken, she would take out the chicken, eat the rest as a sandwich, and enjoy the chicken at the end.

Naturally, I started thinking about my own weird eating habits, which she reminded me of while we were enjoying some leftover birthday cake. I was eating the sponge first and saving the frosting for later, carefully carving through it with my spoon. I don’t always do this. In fact, I ate some the day before the normal way and it tasted just fine (and probably better). It’s just one of my old childhood habits coming back to haunt me.

I was also reminded that I used to arrange our french fries in height order, an idea that I might have gotten from her. I did it so I could save the longest, and in my mind the best, fries for last, because even now I was all about savoring delicious food.

What might be the weirdest old eating habit I had when I was a kid, though, was how I used to drink lemonade. I loved lemonade, and still do, so much so that I wanted to savor the taste and make the experience last as long as possible. Drinking with a straw made sips way too big, and drinking the normal way did not satisfy me, either. The only thing that could solve my problem was drinking it with a teaspoon. It made me so unbelievably happy, so much so that I am lightly shaking my head and almost laughing at myself.

I was such a weird child.

tl;dr: The line above says it all.

Links of the Day

Brazilian Ronaldo has become the majority owner of La Liga side Real Valladolid, buying a 51 percent stake in the club.

Claudio Marchisio has signed for Zenit St. Petersburg after being released by Juventus last month.

Today’s longer read: Grace Robertson on Real Madrid’s tactics post-Cristiano Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane for StatsBomb