The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, December 5

Hi, all!

That’s manager Karen Hills at the top today during the women’s team’s 1-1 draw with Birmingham yesterday. Here’s a quick article about the beginning of her tenure at Spurs, alongside co-manager Juan Amoros.

Ramble of the Day

Occasionally, I do remember that this a Tottenham Hotspur blog, and because this is a Tottenham Hotspur blog, those of us at Cartilage Free Captain are obligated to share news about the club and its teams. Today, I have decided to take the opportunity to share that Spurs have extended a deal with Hugo Boss for the men’s team.

Normally, the news required a photo shoot. It’s a slightly weird photo shoot, though.

The first order of business was always to include the players with actual modeling ability, so the inclusion of Son Heung-min and Paulo Gazzaniga is a no-brainer. Filling out a photo shoot remains a crapshoot, though, and Jan Vertonghen and Érik Lamela seemed like decent bets for a number of reasons. It turns out that those two aren’t the best at modeling.

To be fair, part of it is on the part of the person/people directing this shoot. The players are so weirdly arranged in the middle two pictures; someone’s always getting cut off, and in the second, Lamela is blocking part of Gazzaniga’s face.

They all also appear to be giving off different vibes in the group shots, which is what convinces me Vertonghen and Lamela aren’t truly the modeling type. Let’s take the third image as an example: the vibe seems to be casual happy. Gazzinga and Son manage it pretty effortlessly; maybe Son’s supposed to be more showy, since he’s closest to the camera. It looks like they picked an unflattering photo of poor Lamela because he doesn’t exactly look happy, but Vertonghen definitely perceived “casual happy” differently. He looks bright and excited, which is cool, but absolutely not what Hugo Boss was going for.

Still, I will give both Hugo Boss some plaudits for choosing these two. Like I said earlier, there are good reasons to believe they might have the ability, and I’d like to give some credit to Vertonghen and Lamela for their efforts. If nothing else, the main group shot turned out okay. (We were so close, Lamela!)

tl;dr: Spurs have extended a deal with Hugo Boss, and revealed which players can and can’t model.

Links of the Day

UEFA will introduce a group stage for the women’s Champions League in the 2021-2022 season.

Macclesfield owes former manager Sol Campbell more than £180,000, among other debts, as the club faces a winding-up petition.

Today’s longer read: Ritika Bhasker on the crisis of Liverpool’s women’s team, with one goal and one point after eight matches, and if anyone cares about it for StatsBomb