I love, love, love Japan’s team at the Fifa Under 17 World Cup, being held at the moment in the UAE. The Japanese are quite good. A 1-0 victory over Russia, the European champion; a 3-1 victory over Venezuela. Their place in the final 16 is assured. But I like them for far more than […]

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So, Rihanna came to Abu Dhabi and performed Saturday night, and it only seemed as if half the sports staff attended the event — which went off well, according to The National’s reviewer … but not without some drama in the crowd, which was not entirely ready to deal with standing, mostly, on a hot […]

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The tipoff should have been watching the Under 17 World Cup. Well, actually, I did watch it, for several days. I just didn’t make the obvious mental connection. Those kids were sweating bullets. Ergo …

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It was four years ago today, October 18, 2009, that we began work at The National, in Abu Dhabi. I did not mention Day 1, in the blog entry that day, but it shows us going to the mall and trying to get a sense of the UAE. Seems like yesterday … and a lifetime […]

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The UAE is the host country of the Fifa Under 17 World Cup, the biggest soccer tournament ever staged in this country. As host, the country gets a team in the tournament, and the Emirati teens had done well in their long, very long (and certainly expensive) preparations for the tournament. Which included camps at […]

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It has been an interesting story, Bob Bradley’s two years in Egypt. The former U.S. national team coach, dismissed in the summer of 2011, found a place coaching Egypt, but during a time of historic upheaval there. For most of the subsequent two years, Bradley did well to keep Egypt competitive after revolution and the […]

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* With new video link! The final 15 minutes of North America’s six-team qualifying process, for Brazil 2014, was madness. And it ended with a crazy result: Mexico remaining alive for the World Cup thanks, pretty much entirely, to US Soccer … and with a Mexican television announcer shouting: “God bless America” in English. Mexico […]

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Most of us hear “World Cup” and think of the big event. The senior men, 32 teams. The one every four years that pretty much everyone pays attention to, even Yanks. But Fifa runs several varieties of World Cup, the others being for women or for age-group players, and what once was known as the […]

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The UAE seems to see a major hotel open every week. And that is only a slight exaggeration. Every luxury brand is here, sometimes several times over. I believe we have at least three Fairmonts in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. I might be missing one. A couple of Ritzes, a Kempinski … name a brand […]

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I suppose this entry is a day late. I actually gave up on the Dodgers when they lost that 13-inning game to St. Louis in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. I had just written an email to a friend — it was the 12th inning — saying that whoever won Game 1 […]

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