One of the touted summer signings in UAE soccer was of Jakson Coelho, familiarily known as “Jaja” … a Brazilian attacking midfielder who had been playing in Turkey with Trabzonspor. Al Ahli, one of the Dubai sides, signed him to a three-year, 4.5 million euro ($5.9 million) deal. That’s real money. The idea was to pair […]

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This is epic. And to think I’m still trying to crack double figures in “traffic tickets, lifetime.” The cops in Umm Al Qaiwain, one of the dinky emirates in the north of the UAE, pulled over a 23-year-old guy found to be the country’s leading traffic offender — with 331 outstanding ticket. He also owed […]

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Hard to overstate how big the arrival of Diego Maradona on these shores has been. The former Argentina superstar and national team coach, whose life almost was extinguished by drug abuse a decade-plus ago … has been received with open arms in the UAE and, especially, Dubai … and he seems to be returning the […]

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We here in the UAE are very interested in the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race. For several good reasons: 1) Abu Dhabi is sponsoring one of the six boats in the round-the-world event; 2) Abu Dhabi is one of the ports o’ call during the race; and 3) the whole thing is just a lot of […]

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Interesting story this weekend up the road in Dubai. Lexi Thompson, 16-year-old American from Florida, rolled into the big city up the coast from Abu Dhabi and won the Dubai Ladies Masters by four shots. Pretty much blew away the field of, mostly, Ladies European Tour pros. Thompson now is the youngest woman to win, […]

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  It’s possible to do Christmas in the UAE, but it takes a bit of extra effort. It’s not like you’re going to find Christmas-tree lots on every corner. Malls may pipe in “wintry” music and create tableaux adorned with some sort of plastic snow (the UAE loves the concept of winter, never having actually […]

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This surprised me a bit. Landon Donovan going back to Everton, the English Premier League side in Liverpool, on a two-month loan spanning January and February, during the Major League Soccer offseason. Why should this have puzzled me? For at least two reasons.

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Generous of me, yes, to allow the Clippers to have Chris Paul — since the trade is already made and I’m not the erratic and capricious commissioner of the NBA who can step in and quash a deal. Lakers fans will be agitated about this trade, for two reasons: That Chris Paul will not be […]

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A secret I now will reveal. The final few days in Paris, when it had gotten rainy, and even darker … I was looking forward to getting back to Abu Dhabi. Seriously. My preference, there at the end, was to leave Paris … and go to Abu Dhabi. Yes. Seems a bit daft. But we […]

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At a recent soccer match in Dubai, I heard a young fan of the Al Ahli club launch into a tirade in Arabic that (I’m pretty sure ) was aimed at club executives. Ahli had just lost a match and isn’t having a good season. He carried on for quite some time, at a volume […]

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