A classic, “what the …?” moment. Four of us in the rented Kia Sportage, rolling slowly through the streets of San Francisco. Just a bit north of where you enter the 101 southbound, where it resumes there in the south part of the city. Not sure what neighborhood that is, exactly, but we’d seen a […]

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Never been to a big wedding that wasn’t great fun. But, then, not sure I’ve been to a small wedding that wasn’t great fun, either. A primary reason for coming back to the U.S. from the UAE for this three-and-a-half weeks was to attend the wedding of my nephew, which took place tonight in the […]

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I called this, not that it took particularly keen powers of observation or lots of inside sources. When Sunil Gulati of the US Soccer Federation suddenly dumped Bob Bradley yesterday, it was fair to assume he had someone in mind as a replacement, and today the USSF announced that Juergen Klinsmann is the new national […]

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Twenty-one months ago we got on a plane at LAX and headed for Abu Dhabi in the UAE. From that time till today we had not set foot in the U.S. Longest such stretch in my life. Leah’s, too. We might have come back for a visit sooner, but flying from the UAE, on the […]

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You reach a certain age, and “man, that makes me feel old” no longer comes up. A hundred things every day make you feel old. But the end of Nick Barnett’s career with the Green Bay Packers represents the completion of a sports cycle, the opening stages of which I noticed not all that long […]

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One of the standards in the doldrums of summer print journalism has long been “the series.” Find a couple of people on the staff who aren’t on vacation, and have them spend a bunch of time reporting, and get the graphics people involved, and the photo editor … And let’s put on a show! Let’s […]

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I don’t know how much attention Mohamed bin Hammam got in the United States. His run against Sepp Blatter for the Fifa presidency was a big deal in much of the soccer world, and particularly here in the Gulf, where the idea of a Qatari as boss of Fifa planet was a major news story. […]

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To put a positive spin on this, I went more than 21 months in the UAE without getting a moving violation in an automobile. To be a bit more candid about it … I hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car more than 30, 35 days since we got here, and I already have […]

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I love World Cup qualifying matches. It’s a lot like the World Cup, except everybody participates in qualifying. Even India. At least for another five days. The UAE played India tonight in the first half of a home-and-away pair of games to determine who moves ahead to the final 20 in the Asian Football Confederation. […]

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Just went outside for the oxymoronic concept of a post-exercise “cool down” here in Abu Dhabi in July. And what did I espy? New dumpsters!

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