The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Friday, September 13

Hi, all!

Rounding out the week is captain Jenna Schillaci. The defender has just begun her 11th consecutive season at Tottenham.

Ramble of the Day

Feel free to share or save your opinions on gender reveals, because while the following information is related, the opinion I’m about to share isn’t about gender reveals themselves. I’ll start by presenting what is one of the worst gender reveals out there:

There have been many ways to incorporate football and gender reveals; Atlanta United, for example, had a few players kick balls that revealed either pink or blue smoke. I imagine in a world where people have gotten very creative with gender reveals, there might be other ways to do your football themed gender reveal. Incorporating a referee should not be one of them.

Giving the referee the power to do the gender revealing is probably the most lame way one could go about it. Referees are never the bearers of good news, so the messaging becomes very confusing if all of a sudden a referee is delivering good news. It may make for a decent surprise, but perhaps every other method of gender revealing on the pitch might’ve been better. (Minus points for fully planning a gender reveal but missing out on recording a better quality video.)

While I’m here establishing the inherent inappropriateness of a referee-themed gender reveal, I must bring attention to the organization that brought it to a larger group: The Today Show. It’s certainly unique, but is it truly the “best secret gender reveal ever?” It must be that anyone responsible for that caption doesn’t watch sports, but even then, this video doesn’t quite pack the impact it should to earn such a status. The “Hoda’s Morning Boost” deciding committee mustn’t care much for sports, either, because people who watch sports think about referees very differently. A TikTok making fun of VSCO girl would probably have worked better in the slot.

I’ll choose to take Hoda Kotb’s statement, “we’ve seen a lot of gender reveals; not like that one” as one condemning the worst sport-themed gender reveal out there. Unfortunately, I cannot truly convince myself of that.

To make one final argument in my favor: the Daily Mail called it “ingenious,” meaning it very much is not.

tl;dr: Don’t give the referee the most important role in a gender reveal!

Links of the Day

Burnley’s Danny Drinkwater will miss two weeks after injuring his ankle in a fight outside a nightclub.

MLS will meet supporters next week after the league began punishing fans for certain political signage, becoming the only mainstream American sports league to do so.

Today’s longer read: Robert O’Connor on Shakhtar Donetsk five years since being forced to play away from their stadium after conflict in the region arrived for the BBC