The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, January 31

Hi, all!

Get your sad song cued, because today ends Mousa Dembélé’s residence atop the Hoddle. I couldn’t help but picking out a happy picture; even if he’s gone, at least he was here once for us all to enjoy.

Finished that sad song? Good. We’ve got other songs to listen to today.

Ramble of the Day

Watching a Tottenham game with me, in a quiet space, is a bit of an experience. It’s a musical experience, to be exact, because there are a few songs that share a name with some Spurs players, and I will play them out loud if I can.

Let’s go back to the 87th minute of yesterday’s 2-1 win over Watford, and to the most obvious of song choices in this category. ABBA, that’s your cue.

It’s obvious to get into the spirit of this one. We referenced the song in our write-up of Llorente’s transfer to Tottenham, as a normal site would. Someone rewrote the lyrics to the chorus after he scored a hattrick against Rochdale last season. The announcer said, “They’ll be beating the drums for Fernando tonight in North London” after he scored. I’m even listening to it now, and listened to it then, and listen to it every time he scores. (It obviously is never overkill, considering the amount of times I actually have a chance to play it.) The appeal is clear, but the chorus almost always resonates on the day, especially the beginning — it does take a special day for Llorente to score.

I hardly ever play songs when matches are going poorly from a Tottenham perspective, but there’s always Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro.” It’s mostly tiny sections here and there that are relevant, but if you cue the video at 5:02 and play it for five seconds, you get Gaga going, “Don’t call my name, don’t call my name, bye Fernando,” which I’m sure would be useful on a day one is feeling that way.

Let’s go back to the positive. Yesterday also saw Son Heung-min score, which very obviously calls for Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny.” The entire song basically expresses the sentiment Spurs fans feel for him, and you could probably take the lyrics and fill them in appropriately for recent Tottenham times:

Sunny
Yesterday my life was filled with rain
Sunny
You smiled at me and really eased the pain
Now the dark days are gone, and the bright days are here.

Let’s leave it there for a moment. Son just got back from the Asian Cup, and it was relatively clear that Spurs missed him a little bit. The last few days had been a little bit chaotic in Spurs-land, too: two cup losses and frustrating transfer window nothingness meant the mood was down. It was a very life filled with rain experience, but Son shows up and scores today; the team even looked better with him around all day, very much easing the pain. Plus, I know all of you love Son’s smile because a large number of you petitioned for me to stick Son’s smiling face at the top of the Hoddle for weeks on end. Who could complain about that smile, anyway?

I could go on and on about how every line of this song is about Son, but I think we all get the point.

The final one is for one person who notably wasn’t around yesterday, Harry Kane. Again, it’s obvious, but very, very funny. Like “fernando” and “Alejandro,” “Rock You Like a Hurricane” isn’t a literal dedication to Kane; the lyrics outside of the chorus have very little to do with the forward, but it really is the chorus that makes the song. Outside of the Kane connection, the chorus is iconic, and it does a good job of describing the feeling of a Kane goal. It’s probably the only song that gets repetitive pretty easily; if Kane scores a hattrick against some relegation-bound team, it seems cruel to think of the song. (That might be true for the others, but the tune of this one is harsher than the others.) That, though, is less frequent than all other Kane scoring events, so it’s not a big deal.

Yes, I think these should be played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium when these players score if the stadium ever opens.

tl;dr: A musical Tottenham journey.

Links of the Day

The British military will carry out an underwater search for the plane carrying Emiliano Sala and David Ibbotson after formal request by the Argentine government.

A Sunderland employee was arrested on suspicion of sexual grooming of a boy.

Neymar is out for ten weeks with a broken metatarsal, and is out for Paris Saint-Germain’s Round of 16 encounter with Manchester United in the Champions League.

An attendance record for women’s football has been set in Spain, as 48,121 people watched Athletic Bilbao hosted Atlético Madrid on Wednesday.

Transfer roundup: Arsenal has signed Denis Suárez on loan from Barcelona; Huddersfield has signed Karlan Grant from Charlton; Schalke has signed 18-year-old Rabbi Matondo from Manchester City; West Ham has signed 19-year-old Mesaque Dju from Benfica

Today’s longer read: Rafael Buschmann, Christoph Winterbach, and Michael Wulzinger speak to the lawyer of Football Leaks whistleblower Rui Pinto, William Bourdon, after his client was arrested in Hungary for Der Spiegel