If I were put in charge of domestic soccer here in the UAE, a job I somehow doubt will be offered to me, one of the first matters I would attend to? Making sure that big news stories are not allowed to happen on the same day. In the past four months, the UAE twice […]

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The guy who laid me off 3.5 years ago had his own moment with the sharp end of the “consolidation” side of print journalism last week. That is to say, he’s out of newspapers and apparently is unemployed. Here is the typically code-riddled e-mail to the people who worked for him:

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I am back in Abu Dhabi but still talking to people around me about Beirut and my three days there, which were jammed with enough events and anecdotes and revelations to have felt like three weeks. Before we go any further, let’s link to a discussion that a Beirut-based blogger told me about, a discussion […]

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When you are the visiting team in Beirut, you know your night did not go well when some of the local citizens let off a few rounds of celebratory gunfire after the score goes final. It probably also was not a good night when your coach is fired about 90 minutes after the game. Which […]

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Well, it hasn’t been dull. I am trying to dash this off before the UAE match against Lebanon, in Beirut, gets started. I am in the bowels of a battered stadium with lots and lots of history, much of it not good (war and destruction and refugees), and just getting here was an expedition. Backing […]

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I’m in Beirut, the “Paris of the East” (well, some people call it that) … and the occasion is the UAE playing Lebanon in a World Cup qualifying match tomorrow night. I had always wanted to come here, and I love covering international soccer games, so it’s all working out quite nicely. (Including the Etihad […]

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For months, it seemed as if Abu Dhabi were slowly emptying out. Day after day, the traffic was a little lighter, the crowds a little less intense. Driving around the town, which often is nightmarish, was easy. It peaked last week, when roads were nearly empty in the middle of the day. But now it’s […]

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Good news. I get ESPN America over here, and I actually can see some college football live for the first time in two years. So it was, tonight, that I remembered that it was Saturday afternoon back home, and I knew the colleges were playing lots of game on the last non-NFL weekend, and the […]

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I am fascinated by those moments in sports when naive aspirations and expectations collide with reality. These happen on the field of play, when the impressions framed at practice and training intersect with the skill and determination of a superior opponent in a real game. In the U.S., you see this most often with American […]

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This is the test of the “how much do you loathe Frank McCourt?” state of mind, which is where I live. And my answer?

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