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

Hello, all!

Today at the top is midfielder and new Tottenham captain Josie Green.

Ramble of the Day

Lionel Messi’s father Jorge is a busy man nowadays, as I’m sure you’ve heard. He’s got his son’s likely record breaking move away from Barcelona to facilitate, and that is very important business. You can’t do very important business on an empty stomach, and Gary Cotterill brought that story to Sky Sports yesterday.

For Jorge Messi, having a filling meal before some big discussions about his son’s future was necessary. Cotterill reports that Messi had a lunch of rigatoni pasta, a garlic parmesan eggplant bake (which I think is just eggplant parmesan), and truffles with some water to drink. The person on the other side of the report felt it might be too heavy a lunch, saying he might want to lie down after eating that. It might be, but I say power to Messi.

Maybe you do need to carbo load while negotiating a huge transfer for your son; Messi would know better than I, and I am completely serious when I say that. I will always encourage someone eating filling meals, and I hope it was a good one — and that the proper social distancing measures were taken.

tl;dr: Lionel Messi’s dad Jorge carbo loaded before a meeting about his son’s exit from Barcelona, and good for him, I say.

Stay informed, read this: Howard Bryant on athletes’ refusal to play last week, and their refusal to maintain a racist status quo for ESPN

Links of the Day

A third Paris Saint-Germain player tested positive for COVID-19, with reports suggesting Neymar is one of them.

Real Salt Lake founding executive John Kimball is the club’s interim president after multiple club leaders were accused of discriminatory behavior.
Supplemental reading: Jeff Carlisle with the latest report on the toxic working environment at RSL for ESPN

Brazil’s men’s and women’s national team are now paid equally after a March decision from the federation.

Fulham manager Scott Parker signed a new contract that keeps him at the club until 2023.

Transfer updates: Manchester United signed Donny van de Beek from Ajax; Brighton signed Rebekah Stott from Melbourne City; Celtic signed Shane Duffy on loan from Brighton

A longer read: Archie Bland on Marcus Rashford’s task force to end child food poverty in Britain, gathering brands like Tesco and Kellogg’s and announcing policy goals for The Guardian