The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, June 2

Hi, all!

To those who replied to my comment yesterday about pizza yesterday: Sorry for starting a conversation and then ghosting. I got busy and forgot, but to set the record straight, I would never choose Chicago pizza.

Ramble of the Day

Do you that I dropped a poll in the Hoddle a few weeks ago asking us all to predict who the next Tottenham manager might be? Do you remember that 70% of us picked Graham Potter, and that Mauricio Pochettino wasn’t one of the contenders? (Congrats to the 11% who chose “Other,” by the way.)

I hope you also remember that there’s no shame in getting things like this wrong, but I mainly mention it because I find that poll pretty funny. It’s only three weeks old, and it feels like it’s from a different time period. To be fair, this time a week ago it would be downright shocking that Pochettino and Antonio Conte’s names are in the mix. The game of managerial musical chairs clearly operates on its own chaotic schedule, though, so I think it’s time for another poll — or maybe two.

Let’s start with a new version of the old poll, streamlined to include the top four candidates per the oddsmakers. Funnily enough, none of these people made the cut in the last poll.

My answer changes constantly, but at 10:27p on Tuesday night, my answer is Pochettino. It may be different when I read this again in the morning, and another round of the news cycle could change anything at any time. This feels like a fun way to document the constantly changing situation, though. There aren’t a lot of managerial searches like it.

What I think has added to the intensity is that the club may have a rapidly approaching deadline. It’s constantly changed, too — we’ve seen reports of the manager being chosen by season’s end, and last week the words “seven to ten days” were being thrown around. Regardless of a hard deadline, Spurs really do need to pick someone pretty soon — I don’t need to explain the backlog that could make next season difficult if a manager doesn’t sign on the dotted line in time. That brings me to my next question.

I think if Pochettino is happening, it’s going to ride this wave of momentum and be done on the quicker side. I feel like I am definitely setting myself up for failure right now, but maybe I will take inspiration from the bottled-up positivity that is ready to burst from Spurs supporters and have some confidence in my choices. The downside’s pretty low, anyway.

Polls close at the end of the day, UK time.

tl;dr: The game of managerial musical chairs continues, and so I’ve decided it’s time to replace the old poll with some new polls.

Stay informed, read this: actor Stephanie Hsu on the hardships she’s faced as an Asian, both in Hollywood and outside of it for The Hollywood Reporter

Links of the Day

Scotland’s John Fleck tested positive for COVID-19.

Carlo Ancelotti officially returned as Real Madrid’s manager, ending his two year spell with Everton.

Barcelona signed Eric García on a free.

A longer read: Tom Phillips on backlash following CONMEBOL’s decision to move the Copa América to Brazil despite the country’s high number of COVID-19 cases for the Guardian