The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Friday, September 4

Hi, all.

Naomi Osaka committed to wearing the names of different Black victims of police brutality during the U.S. Open, and you can read a little bit about it from Reuters. Wednesday, she honored Elijah McClain. Sloane Stephens also wore a Black Lives Matter mask this week.

Ramble of the Day

Isn’t it weird that we have only one free weekend before the Premier League returns? I don’t think I’ve processed it yet. The offseason hasn’t been particularly long for obvious reasons, but my brain is very used to having close to three months in between seasons instead of six weeks. It’s not even on my brain’s radar because I haven’t had enough time to forget about last season.

Losing a sense of time because of the pandemic doesn’t help matters, but the necessary shift in the football calendar has really made me notice that I associate regular experiences like the start of the Premier League season with the time of day and year. I remember the joint experiences of the start of a Premier League season and transfer deadline day, and how those events come in quick succession. I remember that these, to me, are summer experiences — I remember deadline day last year and the first day of the season, and how they were normal New York summer days, hot and a little bit humid. That could be the case next week when the Premier League starts, but mid-September is very different from mid-August, and thinking about a transfer deadline day in early October is weird. It seems very far away — for me, it’s the difference between shorts season and pants season, iced coffee season and hot coffee season. In the middle of shorts and iced coffee season, the others seem far away. (Then again, that October day could be hot enough for iced coffee.)

Really, though, it’s the amount of time in between last season and this season that’s getting me. I definitely need more than six weeks to forget the last season and fully prepare for the next. Right now, this upcoming season just feels like a continuation of Project Restart, and since Project Restart was a continuation of last season, this season feels like a continuation of last season to me. I need to forget in order to develop hope for a new season, and I have been programmed to do that over a longer period of time. I am still stuck in the slog of last season, and now I’m just hoping this upcoming season isn’t a slog.

tl;dr: I am not prepared for the Premier League to return.

Stay informed, read this: Hilton Als on London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner and how Black creatives and thinkers have influenced her work for The New Yorker

Links of the Day

Atléti’s Diego Costa and Santiago Arias, and three more PSG players tested positive for COVID-19.

England’s men’s and women’s national teams are now receiving equal pay.

Kick It Out found a 42% increase in discriminatory abuse from football fans during the 2019-20 season from the previous season.

The Premier League canceled its deal with Chinese broadcaster PPTV.

Transfer updates: Leicester signed Timothy Castagne from Atalanta; West Ham signed Rachel Daly on loan from the Houston Dash; Aston Villa signed Matty Cash from Nottingham Forest

A longer read: André Carlisle on how the NWSL’s white players are failing their Black teammates by staying quiet about racism for All for XI