1. The United States is headed for the World Cup for the seventh consecutive time. It’s a lock. Bom dia, Brasil 2014! But it gets better.

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We plan to visit a semi-exotic country semi-soon, so we presented ourselves at the “Disease Prevention and Control” building near the biggest hospital in Abu Dhabi. This is where you go to get the mandatory HIV and tuberculosis tests, when you first arrive in the country. Everyone in the city, then, has been there. And […]

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C’mon. Most of you weren’t born yesterday. You began following sports a long time ago. And you ought to recognize the signs pointing to a “surprise” defeat. This one involving a soccer rivalry everyone in Mexico, and many in the U.S., now care about. The Yanks versus El Tri in World Cup qualifying on Tuesday. […]

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I have reached a point where I read nearly everything I like twice. Three times, even. Talking about books here. I would rather go back and reexamine something I consumed a year ago, or decades ago, than take a chance on something new. (Unless it comes with overwhelmingly enthusiastic recommendations from people I trust.) I […]

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The first thing to keep in mind, when considering the U.S. national soccer team losing tonight at Costa Rica is … The U.S. never wins in Costa Rica. The Yanks didn’t win there when the U.S. was a second-rate soccer country. And they do not win when they are ranked No. 20 in the world, […]

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The UAE national soccer team tonight returned to action for the first time in 167 days, playing what eventually turned into an unfriendly “friendly”, in Riyadh, against Trinidad & Tobago. As I have mentioned, the UAE national team has become one of my favorite sports teams, so I made my way down to the Caffe […]

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It’s one of those stories that prompts an immediate reaction. “Are you sure you heard that right?” Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, is the No. 4 city in the world, behind only New York, London and Paris, according to a survey of more than 18,000 people from 24 countries around the world, including the […]

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Five days. That’s how long it took for the Audi to go dead on me. Five days. Bought it on Thursday, was sitting in a dead Audi on Tuesday. In the middle of the day. In 110-degree heat. Far from home. Of this I can be sure: Never did I imagine I would be pushing […]

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So, the new old car. Did I mention it has tinted windows? Which is pretty much how we roll, here in the UAE. Anyone who is anybody, and some of us who are not, want our windows tinted. To cut down on the sun pouring into the interior of a car and overheating it in […]

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Not an original thought, I’m sure, but original to me. The best way to explain English soccer to somebody back in the U.S., who almost certainly doesn’t really care about the Premier League … is to compare it to college football. The same sort of tribal, DNA-encoded madness.

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