The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Tuesday, September 22

Hi, all!

Here’s Alex Morgan on coming to Tottenham and joking that her daughter will pick up British words during their stay in England.

Ramble of the Day

Poetry has a unique power, doesn’t it? It can so colorfully describe our world, both its beauty and its stinging realities. To have a poem written about you must be such a pleasure, because it is such a unique honor to have someone as masterful as a poet use their extraordinary gift (unless, of course, the person’s bashing you, which sounds like a fantastic poem but one you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of).

Leicester City, with all that in mind, gave it a go. They were beyond thrilled with midfielder Dennis Praet’s performance in the team’s 4-2 win over Burnley on Sunday, and wanted to pay him a tribute. I don’t think it worked out as well as a good poem usually does.

To be fair, nailing an acrostic poem is an extremely tough task. I personally haven’t attempted one since I was a kid, and the more I think about it, the more daunting the task seems. Still, Leicester’s effort doesn’t quite meet the mark, does it?

Some of these lines work fine — “dominate the midfield,” “net a screamer,” and “secure the three points” work fine enough, I think. The other three, not so much. Those lines seem like they ran out of ways to describe him or his performance, especially E and I. I will cut them some slack for “never stop running,” because I didn’t watch the game and maybe he never did stop running. That isn’t to say Praet didn’t encourage his teammates or impress the Blue Army, but those two lines are definitely fillers. Then again, acrostic poems are hard!

It could always be worse, though.

tl;dr: Acrostic poems are hard to get right, and Leicester is the latest example of that.

Stay informed, read this: Gary Suarez on the history of Latinx rap for Vulture

Links of the Day

Manchester City’s İlkay Gündoğan tested positive for COVID-19.

The U.K. will pause plans to bring spectators back to stadiums on October 1 after a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich had ownership stakes in players that did not play for his club, per documents in the FinCEN Files.

Transfer updates: Arsenal signed Alex Rúnarsson from Dijon

A longer read: David Hytner interviews Edwin van der Sar on why no one stays at Ajax, and how that influences his choices as the club’s chief executive for The Guardian