The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, December 3

Hey, everyone!

I’d like to thank the Washington Spirit for doing what I once advocated for: a scenic player reveal, featuring Kelley O’Hara.

Ramble of the Day

Last week, I accidentally found a video ESPN posted where they quiz NBA rookies on symbols of the 1990s. Objects like pagers and bands like NSYNC made the quiz, and the obvious funny thing is that none of these players know what any of these things are. While I was watching it, though, I had a thought: unless you’re exactly in this age group, there are going to be specific answers that will shock or amuse you, and those specific things will probably depend on your age.

I’m only a few years older than these players, but having a sister who is seven years older than me means I caught up on a few things — namely, the music of the times. Here are my thoughts on their answers to the quiz, in bulletpoints:

• I...actually didn’t know that was a pager. I know my dad had one during my lifetime but I cannot remember it. My younger sister just found out and is in disbelief my mom would page my dad.
• I just can’t help but laugh at Onyeka Okongwu thinking Jim Carrey in The Mask was the Grinch.
• The NSYNC saga is incredible, because a number of these answers are unacceptable. Everyone here is in the right age range to know who the Jonas Brothers are, but the wildest guesses are Okongwu’s first two: the Beatles and the Beach Boys. These players came into it knowing it was a quiz about the 1990s — it should be common knowledge that the Beatles and the Beach Boys are earlier than that. They shouldn’t be eligible answers for a single question. What makes Okongwu my favorite is that he ended up getting so, so close to the right answer, confidently exclaiming “Backstreet Boys!” when the answer was NSYNC.
• My older sister told me a story about playing Family Feud on large floppy disks in middle school because they hadn’t updated the computers since the 1980s. (It took them more than a decade to update the computers.)
• LaMelo Ball was always destined to fail this quiz because he doesn’t keep up with “the outside world,” which he defines as everything outside of basketball! I am almost dumbfounded by this.

I definitely revealed my age going through the answers on that one, but so did the NBA players. This video is hilarious to me, and I think I love it.

tl;dr: NBA draftees don’t know the 1990s, but this video probably reveals everyone’s age in the process.

Stay informed, read this: Richard Frishman’s photo essay on the obscured, but present symbols of racism and segregation that still exist in the US for The New York Times

Links of the Day

Colombia fired manager Carlos Queiroz, ending his almost two year spell with the national team.

Dortmund’s Erling Haaland will miss the rest of 2020 with a hamstring injury.

ESPN ranked the top 100 male footballers, a list that includes three Tottenham players.

A longer read: Sean Ingle on the embarrassing lack of progress football’s governing bodies have made on concussion protocols despite the increasing amount of information on concussion for The Guardian