The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for April 1

Hi, all!

Not that I’ve ever been in the habit of doing April Fools’ jokes here, but I’ll take the time anyway to note that I’m not making any today.

Ramble of the Day

Who knew, just a week after I rambled about the Royal Spanish Football Federation’s rebrand, there’d be another one worth discussing? That’s your cue, Inter Milan.

The overwhelming response has been that the new crest is inferior, and I have to say that I agree. The powers that be clearly simplified the crest a bit by taking out the gold-like color and making the blue a bit more mainstream, and getting the F and C out of the crest. My chief complaint is with the gold, which does not look great in the above picture but truly pops on the actual kit. The new one looks duller in comparison.

The other comment I’ll make, which is similar to the one I made about the RFEF’s new crest, is that it looks like it could belong to a company outside of the football world. Granted, Inter’s is much more detailed and unique than the RFEF’s; because it stays fairly close to the old crest, Inter’s new one doesn’t feel nearly as generic.

That sort of neutrality in the design was most certainly by design, though. The New York Times’ Rory Smith wrote about football teams’ interest in tapping bigger audiences through streetwear and other stylish endeavors. It’s a really interesting article worth your time, but it details not just the fairly well-known pivot of Paris Saint-Germain to fashion but rebrands. Smith details Juventus’ rebrand, and later noted that Inter went through a similar process:

In 2016, at [Andrea] Agnelli’s instigation, the club decided to embark on a comprehensive rebrand. Every aspect of the team’s identity would be in play, including, most controversially, its iconic crest, a symbol that had roots stretching back more than a century. ...

“The whole strategy was to widen the spectrum of activities without abandoning the club’s core, which is football,” [Lidi Grimal of Interbrand] said.

To present the idea to the Juventus board, Interbrand made a short film, one that offered a glimpse into what this bold new future might look like: that stylized J emblazoned on cafes and hotels, adorning events, used in collaborations with cutting-edge fashion brands.

I continue to comment on the lack of football personality, but that’s clearly the point — they’re not just trying to create football crests. Smith’s piece gets into it a little bit, but it’s about a trade-off of brand loyalty — it’s really unlikely supporters jump ship because of a change in crest, but the hope is that the new crest will bring in a very different type of consumer.

he article noted it might be too early to know if the strategy is working out for clubs, but I find it pretty fascinating. It is one of the more innovative things clubs have done to make more money (especially if we’re comparing it to the Manchester United model of having any type of sponsor), and piques my curiosity for the strategy.

tl;dr: Inter Milan is the latest to undergo a crest makeover, and there’s an interesting article from The New York Times explaining that clubs do this to appeal to a broader audience of people who don’t even watch the sport.

Stay informed, watch this: comedian Bowen Yang on discrimination towards the AAPI community, and a call to action to “do more” on Saturday Night Live

Links of the Day

Arsenal women manager Joe Montemurro will leave at the end of the season.

FIFA announced the host cities for the 2023 women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

A longer read: Grant Wahl on the mononymous Ronaldo and his attempt to reinvent himself as owner of Real Valladolid after a playing career with epic highs and lows for Sports Illustrated