The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, May 1

Hello, everyone!

You’re probably distracted, but in case you want to check it out, there’s an easy to go through ramble.

Ramble of the Day

There are many aspects of kit design, one of them being that of the font on the back of the jersey. A good font works well with a jersey, and is frequently something one wouldn’t comment on. A bad one, though — well, a bad font can be incredibly distracting, regardless of the jersey design. Naturally, I’m going to pick out some of the bad ones in my memory/Google search results.

Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images

This is a version of the most normal of bad fonts. This font, used by Adidas for the 2018 World Cup, is not difficult to read, necessarily, but it probably helps that you know who Toni Kroos is. The “k” and the “r” are weird, though, and probably need to be redesigned to be less blocky. I imagine the “k” could be confused for an “h” or “x,” which could get annoying. Similarly, I’d guess there’s a similar problem with the “r” and “a.”

Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images

This font, worn by Real Madrid at times this season, doesn’t have a readability problem. However, this particular font is just ugly. It’s too close to a font one would find on a poorly designed poster made by someone who is an amateur. The “z” in Benzema in particular seems so out of place, compared to the other letters on the various jerseys, and on a jersey in general, though that’s true of the font as a whole. I’m not really sure what they’re going for here, but it’s a weird one.

Photo by Giuseppe Bellini/Getty Images

Lastly, I’ll highlight the font that Villarreal had on the back of their jerseys in 2016-17. Former Tottenham player Roberto Solado got to wear something that wasn’t hard to read, but was definitely not designed well. The number looks like it was written by someone whose handwriting is a little bit sloppy, which is fine in normal contexts, but strange in a font and in a sporting context. The name is written very shakily for some reason, and doesn’t really go with the number. It doesn’t look like actual handwriting, but just some shaky version of real handwriting. Again, I’m not sure what the aesthetic they’re going for here is.

That said, this isn’t the most offensive part of the font story with Villarreal that season.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images

Take a look at the number Manu Trigueros is sporting. Congratulations if you guessed that was a four next to the one, because it barely looks like that. It does vaguely resemble a nine, but we know it isn’t thanks to the Soldado jersey. It also looks a lot like the random squiggle I draw in the corner of my paper when my pen stops working and I need it to start working again. I’d also make the argument that it looks like Harry Potter’s scar doing yoga. Either way, it is a ridiculous way to make a four, and no matter how one feels about experimenting with fonts, it should be pretty easy to recognize that this was a failed one.

tl;dr: The ugly world of fonts.

Links of the Day

FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Chamber has ruled that Tottenham Hotspur does not have to pay solidarity payments to DeAndre Yedlin’s youth club, Crossfire Premier.

David Squires checks up on the Premier League’s top six teams in his latest cartoon.

Today’s longer read: Noah Davis interviews the LA Galaxy’s Sebastian Lletget, who he calls “the most interesting man in American soccer,” for ESPN