In a way, Italy began from the first announcement of the Alitalia flight crew, while still on the ground in Abu Dhabi. It is rare to hear Italian on the Arabian Peninsula, and to most Americans it is a delightful language. Round and rhythmic, almost like poetry with its cadences and energy. Wonderful to hear […]

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I can state categorically that before arriving in the UAE, I had no idea the English city of Wigan had a serious soccer team. I very possibly had never heard of Wigan at all, which I am not going to feel bad about because 1) it is not a place tourists go, on purpose and […]

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As I wrote in a blog post for The National, I am predisposed to like David Moyes. He twice gave Landon Donovan a chance to play Premier League football, during the Major League Soccer offseason, and Landon used those two winter loan stretches, at Everton in 2010 and 2012, to put to rest the “can’t […]

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This is an awful time to be a Los Angeles-area sports fan. It has been mostly dreary since I left the region to live and work in Abu Dhabi, in 2009, but it seems to be bottoming out, the past four or five months. Aside from hockey, which has no significant hold on Southern California […]

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Generally, I believe we should ignore pretty much all dreams. They may tell more about us than we care to know, or to share, certainly. Though, yes, the Bible has a fair number of dreams interpreted. Thinking of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel, in particular, and also of Joseph and the pharaoh. But this was such a […]

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A few days ago I wrote about Josef Hickersberger, one of my favorite soccer coaches in the UAE, and how he had been rushed back to Abu Dhabi from retirement in Austria in an attempt to salvage the season by leading a struggling team to a victory in the President’s Cup semifinals. And how did […]

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I don’t know Justin Bieber from the man in the moon. I have to keep checking to make sure his first name is Justin, not Dustin. An old-guy thing. Except that I never would have been a fan at any age. Hmm. I do know this: Dustin … Justin Bieber made some impressions in his […]

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Justin Bieber is doing a particularly long/grueling world tour, working name the Believe Tour. One of his stops is in Dubai, tonight and tomorrow. A certain segment of the local population — the usual Bieber demographic of girls ages 10 to 14, or so — has gone ape. And what went on today demonstrates at […]

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I tend to like coaches of team sports. Of any of the team sports. They push you towards the goals you would set for yourself if you were not a lazy corner-cutter. They foment teamwork. They have a plan. They have expertise. They have their own perhaps selfish motives, of course. Power, money, ego. But […]

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I was probably as pleased as anyone, aside from Real Madrid fans, perhaps, to see Barcelona go out of the Champions League. I’m very tired of their dainty little guys playing dainty little football, knocking it around 15 yards at a time, going sideways much of the time, just holding, holding, holding, able to run […]

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