To “sort out” is Brit-speak, and it commonly is used when referring to soccer and describes the process by which good defenses deal with attacking players. It implies a sort of impudent coming forward of small men with high-skill … for whom the antidote is a few hard men of limited finesse but grim countenance, […]

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My recollection is this: I called Landon Donovan the day before the 2001 MLS Cup final and talked to him for 10 or 15 minutes. Yes. The day before. Called him on his cell, and he picked up, and I wrote a story based on what we talked about on the eve of the game. […]

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Casper Ware, the star point guard at Long Beach State, the kid who scored a career-high 28 points in the 86-76 spanking of 10th-ranked Pitt on the Panthers’ home floor … … is getting a shout-out from a significant website.

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I believe the 2011-12 NBA season should not happen. At all. It’s not as if the NBA is missed, which is probably pretty damning. Do you know anyone — anyone — who is talking about how the lack of NBA games is tearing them up? Or even vaguely disturbing them? That, then, is a league […]

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It has been a rough, oh, coupla-three decades for Long Beach State alumni who care about the major sports. The football program was killed, and the basketball program, which was one of the nation’s best for a half-dozen seasons straddling 1970, generally wasn’t very good. So, as a 49ers alumnus, I was quite pleased to […]

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If ever you feel despair about the future of American national soccer, wondering if any of us will live to see the Yanks win the World Cup … or get to the final … or semifinal … well, things could be far worse. You could be in China, wondering when your nation of 1.3 billion […]

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Living in the United States, it’s easy to think: “United Arab Emirates? Makes no difference to me. Not even sure where it is.” Two news stories in The National’s business section ought to make you reconsider that. One involves Boeing. The other involves Ford.

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The biggest event on the sports calendar in the UAE is the annual Formula One race, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and that went down today. F1 probably brings more tourists to the country than any other event. People from the region, certainly, but Europe, as well. The newsroom at The National very much had […]

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Since coming to the UAE, I drink a lot of tea. Which is curious, because I have never liked it. Not hot and not cold. Turns out, I learn from my reading of a story in The National about tea sales and production in India, that the world’s largest consumers of tea, on a per […]

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You think your national soccer team has problems? (Well, if your team is China, it does.) The UAE fell out of contention for the 2014 World Cup today, November 11, 2011 — three-and-a-half years ahead of the 2014 World Cup. Done. Out of it. Can’t survive the second-to-last round of Asia Confederation qualifying. That’s right. […]

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