The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, February 14

Hi, Hoddlers!

In addition to yesterday’s result, there was one other significant thing in the Tottenham Hotspur universe.

Ramble of the Day

I’ve talked probably too much about Toby Alderweireld’s social media strategy as my time as Hoddler-in-Chief, and though there will been enough change in activity to make it worth an update soon, I won’t today. That said, you know I really like the effort players’ social media teams put into hyping up matches, but Moussa Sissoko’s team blew every other social media team out of the water yesterday. (You’ll get the joke in a second.)

You’re looking at the image Sissoko decided to share with the world hours before the match, or as I like to call it, Mission: Impossible — Champions League. It actually has the look of a poorly made movie poster, in which Sissoko is the star of an action movie. It has logos in the corners that add a semblance of importance, including the image credit on the bottom right. It also changes up the fonts in the center, making “TOTTENHAM DORTMUND” look like the movie’s name, with the smaller font playing the role of a tagline and a release date. It’s absolutely magnificent.

One does have to think about the direction they took, though. Essentially every footballer that posts such edits before a match tries to look cool in a modern design type of way, but this is obviously a different approach. Maybe Sissoko and his team were trying to look cool, but they also decided to go for a destruction theme and blow up something.

I’m not sure what they’re trying to blow up: the Champions League? Wembley Stadium? Something else? Blowing up the Champions League would be counterproductive; why would you want to kill a competition while you’re still in it? As for blowing up Wembley, I understand getting sick of playing there, but this would be impractical considering Tottenham Hotspur Stadium isn’t ready yet. Perhaps Sissoko is trying to save either of them, or both, because he’s essentially Tom Cruise.

I respect the effort and the idea, and now Sissoko and his team can claim that Spurs are undefeated while posting destruction-themed photoshops. I would just love to know more about the thought process behind this, and hope there are many more from where this one came.

tl;dr: Moussa Sissoko, action movie star?

Links of the Day

Son Heung-min is set to have a variety show called Sonsational on Korean network tvN, and is expected to debut in the first half of 2019.

Mauro Icardi has had the Inter Milan captaincy taken away from him, and is not in the squad to face Rapid Vienna in the Europa League.

Declan Rice has decided to play for England.

Juan Carlos Osorio has resigned from the Paraguay job after less than six months in the job.

Today’s longer read: Nicolle Zamora writes a haiku for each of the remaining Champions League clubs for Unusual Efforts