The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, May 28

Hello, all!

This looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?

Ramble of the Day

Your Hoddle topic comes from my older sister, who I assigned to pick a topic while I was busy working on something else. With the tiniest bit of guidance, we settled on a prompt found on Twitter.

I am pretty good at quitting shows that I get bored of, but there are two shows that stick out in my mind: Friends and The Newsroom. Friends won’t win this contest, but it had to be a contender because it’s an easy show to get through and especially so in a rerun format. It brings some cultural value, but the payoffs aren’t there. It’s a show claiming to reflect the experiences of 20 and 30 somethings of the time; I’m sure many related to it, and I think it definitely is a show of its time. That said, it was always an unrealistic depiction of living in New York, and the evidence was there from the beginning even if people ignored it.

The Newsroom, though, has to win because it developed a pretty cringeworthy reputation, and because I looked up the number of episodes as was shocked it was only 25. (It felt so much longer!) The show inspires certain corners of the internet to remember its specific cringe every so often, and I tend to always catch them and question the decision making. Every time I run into one of these things, I cringe so sharply that I can’t help but use the word cringe over and over again. Every time I see a clip, or read something about the show, I cringe because I didn’t remember it; I think I must have blocked it all out because it’s so awful on second discovery. Simply, it tries to be profound but misses the mark on every occasion but in a lot of different ways. In even more simple terms: it’s a complete mess.

tl;dr: I came up with a lot of words about watching The Newsroom, a show I probably blocked out because it seems so awful every time I hear something about it.

Links of the Day

Coronavirus:

• Four more tested positive for COVID-19 in the Premier League’s latest round of testing.
• The NWSL will return June 27, becoming the first U.S. team sport on the schedule since the pandemic began.
• Birmingham is the second FA WSL side to furlough staff.

The FA fined Arsenal’s women’s team for discriminating against an autistic coach.

FA WSL’s Reading will move to the Madejski Stadium next season.

FIFA warned the Mexican Football Federation that promotion-relegation between Liga MX and Ascenso MX must return at some point.

Today’s longer read: Suzanne Wrack interviews Wolfsburg’s Hedvig Lindahl on returning to play in the Frauen-Bundesliga and how becoming a parent encouraged her to give back to women’s football for The Guardian