The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, March 28

Hey, everyone!

Small update to yesterday’s Hoddle: Steve Nash was listed as an executive producer on Shaq Vs. because Shaquille O’Neal stole the idea!

Ramble of the Day

Today’s ramble comes at the request of my younger sister, who had some stories to share on Twitter yesterday and wanted me to share. I’ll let her tweets do the talking to start:

I won’t begin detailing all of these occurrences, but I figured I’d detail the story of the 2017 Eric Dier/Harry Winks events, which all happened during the same day. Tottenham visited a Nike a few days before the team’s preseason friendly against Roma back in 2017, where the conversations took place. I’ll go through what my filter-less sister said to a number of players that day, and explain the stories she shared.

• She got a wave out of Jan Vertonghen, who was being ignored by the fans around him. She was not thrilled with the idea that he was being ignored.
• We bought a sign noting White Hart Lane’s geographic location on our trip to London a few months earlier, and all the players were to sign that. Dier was the first one, and like she said, he signed a little too big. No one remembers exactly what she said, but it was loud enough and Dier heard and made this face, but less blinking:

• She asked Dele if his favorite song at the moment was “Despacito,” considering Luke McGee once posted a video of him singing Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself.” Dele said no.
• She congratulated Kyle Walker-Peters on winning the U20 World Cup, and he happily thanked her. (This isn’t weird obviously.)
• She told Cameron Carter-Vickers that he’s “the future” and that Bruce Arena should call him up. Carter-Vickers reacted politely and quietly, and Arena (reasonably) never called him up. “Looking back on it, I say a lot of players are the future,” she said last night. She has no regrets saying this, but admits his inactivity with the national team at that time wasn’t a mistake.
• She told Winks he looked like a member of One Direction, to which Winks replied that he gets that a lot. He took it in stride.
• She shouted into Kevin Wimmer’s ear (because it was loud and he had to bend down to hear) that he scored an own goal against Arsenal on her birthday. He was very apologetic, and she was very forgiving.
• She skipped over Toby Alderweireld and Christian Eriksen “like they were nothing” because a woman in charge of the event was rushing people out.
• She was on a mission to get a picture with Harry Kane because the last time she got a picture (in 2012, long before he was [says with emphasis] Harry Kane), she blinked. It didn’t work because he was the most in-demand player and was whisked away pretty quickly, so Mission: Impossible continues.

If you have questions, I’ll redirect them to her and report back, or I suppose you could tweet them at her yourself — your choice. Her filter-less adventures around footballers are always a treat, particularly in retrospect when you’ve had the chance to sit down, reflect, and poke a bit of fun.

tl;dr: How to talk to footballers, according to my younger sister.

Links of the Day

Bayern Munich has signed Lucas Hernandez, and he will join the club from Atlético Madrid in July.

Gabby Agbonlahor has retired at age 32 following a 13 year career.

Moise Kean’s father said Juventus still owes him two tractors and is no longer giving him free tickets to watch his son play.

Today’s longer read: Tom Dart on the startlingly high ticket prices for U.S. men’s national team games for The Guardian