The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Friday, April 12

Hey, everyone!

Let’s start here:

I’ll now share that I waited 30 seconds for someone to get hit by a car.

Ramble of the Day

Dressing very literally for an occasion is hardly news. People go to sporting events dressed in athletic gear even though they won’t be performing any particularly physical activities. People also like to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s all good; it’s a way to celebrate or represent, and it’s a fun way to mix up the way one thinks about wearing clothes.

This, too, has extended into how football coaches dress on the touchline. In the most normal, and perhaps common, way, coaches will wear a jacket with a club crest. In Orlando, though, there has been a dramatic extension of all these ideas: from my recollection, the team’s current coach and the last one have worn purple on every single matchday.

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

This is current coach James O’Connor, and he’s wearing the palest shade of purple. There are occasions where he wears a white shirt with a purple tie, which is a very normal way to carry out the dress code, but the pale purple shirts are common. Take a look at O’Connor’s predecessor, Jason Kreis.

Logan Bowles-USA TODAY Sports

Kreis also had some white shirt, purple tie combinations, but here he is in the pale purple shirt. This one looks like a polo, and I suppose we could wonder if those pants are properly fitted for those shoes, but we’re talking about the shirt here. This particular shade isn’t really his color, and neither was the even paler purple shirt (shirts?) he has rocked while in Orlando.

I had a hypothesis about it possibly being an order from the powers-that-be at Orlando City. After the team’s first head coach, Adrian Heath, was fired, they were maybe trying to achieve a certain image of glamour that Kaká deserved. That might have also extended into a sort of smoothness of brand, which includes making the coaches wear purple. I’m not so sure this is entirely the case, though.

Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports

Kreis was at New York City FC before Orlando, and he wore a lot of blue in his time there. It was much easier for him to find colors that suited him, and diversify his shirt options, but the color blue easily lends itself to that. It’s entirely possible that Kreis and O’Connor just take inspiration from the clubs they work for; the sample size is too small to say it’s coming down from their employers. I’ll have to keep an eye on it as Orlando eventually get more coaches.

There is one thing I noticed about both men, though; why have neither them (so far, in the case of O’Connor) not tried out a darker purple? It might be harder to find a nice dress shirt in a darker purple, and it might not be a fun choice in the Orlando heat, but I do have to ask. The heat probably limits outfit choices, which is unfortunate. There is probably a lot one could do with purple, but I do have to wonder if it is different for menswear opposed to womenswear.

This ends my exploration of two coaches’ clothing choices. Tune in next week for other randomness!

tl;dr: My latest in an investigation of color.

Links of the Day

Three Chelsea fans were not allowed to enter the stadium for their Europa League match at Slavia Prague because they sang a racially abusive song about Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah.

Atlético Madrid’s Diego Costa will miss the rest of the season after picking up an eight match ban for insulting the referee’s mother last weekend.

Florent Malouda found out he was fired from a coaching position at FC Zurich on Twitter.

Today’s longer read: Caitlin Murray reports on how the U.S. women’s national team’s fight for equal pay has raised the stakes each and every time they play for The New York Times