The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Tuesday, April 21

Hi, everyone!

Today at the top is former Tottenham defender Gheorghe Popescu, and next up is the best of a social distancing genre.

Ramble of the Day

Let’s try to recall some fun times with a question that I took straight out of the Cartilage Free Captain writers’ room: Which Tottenham Hotspur season did you find most enjoyable in your years watching the team? For me, it was 2016-17.

I don’t wish to shove my definition of the question on anyone else, so interpret it however you like. To explain myself though, I thought of the question as this: What was the season you most looked forward to watching the team play on a given game day? For me, that’s a question about the football being played. 2018-19 is my irony filled answer, because a great cup run was mixed with a lot of weird events along the way. 2016-17, though, was simple fun, especially towards the end.

2016-17 is arguably Spurs’ best season under Mauricio Pochettino if you’re just looking at the football. A ton of players enjoyed terrific individual seasons — that was the year Dele, Harry Kane, and Son Heung-min each scored 20 goals — and eventually, it resulted in a team that was perfectly putting together a manager’s smart plan. Coupled with a celebratory year to close White Hart Lane, it was just a really good time. I know I’ve been enjoying this compilation of all the goals the team scored that year.

tl;dr: Pick your favorite Tottenham season.

Programming Alert

NBC Sports Network will start showing the ePremier League invitational on its app this morning. Moussa Sissoko will participate, with his first match coming on Wednesday.

NBCSN will also show the USWNT’s gold medal victory over Brazil at Beijing 2008 at 11p ET.

Links of the Day

Coronavirus:

• FIFPro said the number of players showing symptoms of depression has doubled during the pandemic.
• FIFA said it will not reallocate the $1 billion allocated to women’s football from 2019 to 2022.
• MLS is in discussions with players over potential salary cuts.

Lokomotiv Moscow’s Innokenty Samokhvalov died aged 22 from suspected heart failure.

The Utah Royals will add Sarah Bouhaddi and Dzsenifer Marozsán after they finish out the 2019-20 season with Lyon.

Liga MX is suspending promotion-relegation for the next five years.

Bayern Munich signed Alphonso Davies to a new contract that runs until 2025.

Today’s longer read: Bria Felicien on the Atlanta Beat’s WUSA tenure, 19 years after its first match for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution