The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Monday, September 7

Hey, everyone!

Above is forward Rianna Dean. Below is a ramble I did as quickly as possible because who wants to put in the effort on a holiday weekend?

Ramble of the Day

The Tottenham players did something that honestly looks like a wonderful attraction — the Dare Skywalk at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. I remember watching people walking on it during that preseason game some time ago, and this is the simple exchange I had with my older sister about it:

Sister: Are there people doing the Skywalk DURING this game?!

Me: Imagine watching the game from that angle. That’s so cool.

Sister: Cool is a word for it.

I still think it’d be pretty cool after watching this video, which is a few things: a good advertisement for the Skywalk; an unnecessary advertisement for All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur and Audi; and fairly revealing about the players that did the walk.

I do feel for the players who ended up living through their fear of heights, and I’m glad they all got through it in the end. When I wrote earlier that the video was fairly revealing, I wasn’t really talking about those players. What I really mean is this experience is probably something people will enjoy in large groups of the people they came with and the strangers who also decided that day would be the one for them, too. The players were basically a few different types of tourists you’d run into on an adventure like this:

• The confident type that mostly keep to themselves, like Ben Davies and Hugo Lloris. Davies is definitely who I aspire to be on top of the Skywalk.
• The type that clearly did fine, but you definitely didn’t pay much attention to them while you were doing your own thing, like Giovani Lo Celso or Gedson.
• The type that clearly suffered from a fear of heights, like Japhet Tanganga and Harry Winks. My sister expects to be like Tanganga if she ever does it; I expect I’ll be like Dele, who was both fine and didn’t want to let go of the bar.
• The show-offs, like Son Heung-min and Lucas Moura. These two enjoyed themselves a little too much, and I think yelling at people on the street who definitely did not know who they were or what was going on was maybe a little too far.

tl;dr: Enjoy this video of the players that went on the Skywalk at the stadium!

Stay informed, watch this: “Young, British and Somali at Cambridge University,” a short film from The Guardian following four British-Somali students as they return to school during the coronavirus pandemic

Links of the Day

Czec Republic named a new squad for its Nations League match against Scotland because the original squad and coaching staff are in quarantine.

Lionel Messi will stay at Barcelona.

Transfer updates: Chelsea signed Kai Havertz from Bayer Leverkusen; Everton signed Allan from Napoli; Wolves signed Fabio Silva from Porto and Marcal from Lyon; Birmingham signed Georgia Brougham on loan from Everton; Bristol signed Benedicte Haaland from Lugano

A longer read: Paul Doyle interviews Sophie Cook, the first equality and diversity officer at Whitehawk FC, and the first transgender person working in professional English football for The Guardian