Landon Donovan continues to make news on the Old World side of the Atlantic. And David Beckham’s decision to stay with the Galaxy led to some financial fallout in Paris.

It’s rather fun to read about this stuff in English and French papers, respectively, and we have some links for you.

The news peg here: Landon’s Everton side defeated Clint Dempsey’s Fulham team tonight to reach the final 16 of the FA Cup. From the accounts we’re going to link to, it seems clear that Landon outplayed Dempsey. No surprise to those of us who always have been quite clear in our minds about the identity of the country’s best player.

Now to the links!

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And you thought Costco was supposed to be about bargains.

The scary part of this is … these might be bargains.

If you hope to attend the Super Bowl, in Indianapolis next week, Costco has packages for you. Yes, the same people who sell you massive quantities of peanut butter, corn flakes and paper diapers and lots of other things you probably don’t need all that much of … are now flogging tickets to the NFL’s big game, February 5, and the costs seem pretty steep, by Costco standards.

To wit:

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Seems like time for a list.

I’m pretty sure I’ve noted on this blog that I am among a rapidly shrinking fraction of Americans who have seen every Super Bowl. Either in person or on television.

Do the math. The first Super Bowl was played on January 15, 1967. Even if we cast a wide net and suggest that a 6-year-old could have seen the Packers and Chiefs and have some memory of it … the very youngest a person could then be and still have seen every SB is … 50 years old. And some large percentage of the U.S. population is younger than 50.

So, having some real-time memory of all of them, I feel in a position to compare and contrast and rank my favorite 10 SBs.

Counting down from No. 10, “Letterman style”, of course.

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An American named Eldrick Tont Woods, generally referred to as “Tiger” … is in Abu Dhabi this week to play in the local European Tour event.

We could tell you he’s here, for the first time, because he likes visiting this part of the world, or heard that the weather here this time of year is nice, or just likes hanging out with the multinational guys on the Euro Tour. Or even that he wants to shore up his “brand” here in the Middle East.

But those would be secondary or tertiary explanations. Tiger is here, first, for the money.

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Zinedine Zidane is remembered almost as much for headbutting Marco Materazzi of Italy in the World Cup final in 2006 as he is for his years as a great player.

But how notorious would he be … if he had headbutted the referee, instead?

A midfielder for the Al Ahli team in Dubai did just that, apparently, and it’s making a lot of news. As it should.

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The weather is the No. 1 topic of discussion in the United Arab Emirates at the moment, and not for the usual reasons. Instead of this being one of the hottest places in the world … we are struggling to deal with Arctic temps. Arctic, I tell you.

Like 56 … 55 … 54 … 53 (!) Fahrenheit.

And, imagine this: We will try to endure an overnight low of (brace yourself) 48 degrees on Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

This is not entirely a laughing matter.

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As someone who watched NFL games as a professional observer … well, I pretty much took a generation off.

The Rams and Raiders left Los Angeles after the 1994 season, and the 18 years I worked in the same media market as at least one NFL team has since been nearly equaled by the 17 seasons I have not.

Strangely, I may have watched more NFL football in the past four months, here in Abu Dhabi, than I have for years. (New satellite package!) Even more than when I was covering Super Bowls from 1995 till 2006 or so. I also have watched this extra NFL on television, which is quite different than seeing it live, in the sense of the zillion replays and slo-mo camera work.

And I have noticed one major change in the game:

The passing accuracy of quarterbacks. It’s now off the charts — or the QB is a bum.

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Having done this blog for 3.5 years, most of it while holding a full-time job, while moving or stationary, updated from a half-dozen countries … I can assure you it takes a lot of effort. Just to post. Let alone be good. Let alone be ultra labor-intensive and really good.

Thus, recognizing the effort that went into a clever and informative blog post … well, I feel compelled to share.

The 2011 Bobblehead All-Americans from thebaseballdiaspora.com website.

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More basketball!

I wasn’t planning to go this way. Though I did think, the day before the Lakers played in Miami, that the Heat would win, no problem, and considered writing that just to show my powers of analysis … but then it got too late, and the Heat led by 21 after three before winning by 11. Well, duh.

This is about one of those silly espn.com surveys. The results to this one astound me, and it involves Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

To wit:

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This is hardly noticed in the particularly British (or Indian) parts of the world, but basketball probably is the second-most popular game on the planet.

I know that several sports have made that claim (from volleyball to team handball to ping-pong, etc), but hoops probably is the real No. 2. Plus, a survey conducted last March found that basketball is the No. 2 sport in the UAE right this minute.

FIBA, the international basketball organization, lists 214 member countries, which is six more than FIFA claims for “the world game.”

But basketball is hardly played in Britain or the subcontinent, so the UAE version of the game goes pretty much unnoticed here by the English-language media, which is in thrall to the British and Indian sports suite — because most journalists here come from one of those two backgrounds.

Which means we can’t really blame the UAE Basketball Association for not bothering to promulgate information in English. But things are going on out there, including a domestic league and a national team which plays in most of Asia’s big basketball events.

I managed to find out that the UAE national team play was playing today, and made the 200-mile roundtrip to Dubai and … well, as the headline says, let’s call UAE hoops “a work in progress.”

Final score: Ittihad club of Alexandria 86, UAE 61.

What are the UAE’s problems?

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