The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, December 30

Hi, all!

If you wanted to know, Angel City FC founding investors Lindsey Vonn and PK Subban have ended their engagement. (What do you mean when you say they have other claims to fame?)

Ramble of the Day

Those who run the Leeds United Twitter account felt the need to, at the minimum, be a little bit petty after yesterday’s big win over West Brom. They shared a video of Karen Carney giving an opinion they disagree with during Amazon Prime Video Sport’s coverage of the game, a weird approach for a group of people that should just be celebrating.

What might be the reason for sharing something like this after a big win? It’s clear they disagreed with Carney’s opinion strongly, but a lot of people in the sports world feel their team is not respected enough. Whether or not that is true can only be determined on a team by team basis, and I have no reason to go into that now. Like I mentioned, it’s a petty way to go about things.

What might be achieved by sharing such a tweet? Clearly, the people running the Leeds United Twitter account would be poking fun at Carney. Anyone who’s spent enough time scrolling casually at the replies on a popular social media account knows making fun of someone is an invitation for others to make fun of the same person. So, what happened when this tweet went up? Followers started directing abuse at Carney, and it was sexist abuse. The Leeds Twitter account essentially unnecessarily put a target on Carney’s back.

This also begs the question: Why Carney? She’s hardly the first to offer an opinion on air that someone might think is worth disagreeing with. Almost every weekend of football sees someone share a video of an analyst sharing an opinion worth disagreeing with, in part because the poster knows many of us will disagree with the opinion. That, though, is generally not the habit of football clubs; if it was, Leeds would certainly have posted videos of the other analysts they’ve disagreed with. They haven’t, though, so it sticks out that Carney, whose point isn’t actually abjectly horrible, is being singled out.

It is a relief Carney has received a lot of support since the tweet went up. I can hope that encourages those who posted the tweet to learn why that tweet wasn’t a good idea, and delete it. Like I said, it put a genuinely unnecessary target on Carney for abuse and when you do that, your intentions don’t matter.

Links of the Day

Swedish women’s club Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC dissolved just two months after winning the title.

Diego Costa’s Atléti contract was terminated by mutual consent.

MLS will invoke a force majeure clause to modify the collective bargaining agreement with players, a decision the league made because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PSG fired Thomas Tuchel, ending his two year spell at the club.

David Squires recaps a wild football year in his latest cartoon.

A longer read: Paul MacInnes explains how new post-Brexit rules impact football clubs for The Guardian