Aside, perhaps, from the return of oil to $100 a barrel, the United Arab Emirates would like nothing more than to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. The UAE played in the 1990 World Cup, a remarkable achievement at the time, given the country had not existed 20 years earlier. But they have not been […]

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Going back to the Abu Dhabi days here. In the UAE, daily English-language journalism is, 95 percent of the time, not dissimilar from English-language journalism in the U.S. or Britain. Timely, fact-based, well-sourced. But then there is that 5 percent when things get a bit squirrely, and you didn’t really see what you saw — […]

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The TV package I have here in southern France gives me a lot of sports stuff, but Major League Baseball is not part of the menu. Team handball nearly 24/7. Lots of tennis. Every English Premier League match, every Champions League match. (I actually watch some of those.) No baseball. This is France, after all, […]

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I had disappeared down the YouTube rabbit hole today, when I came across some videos that might interest sports fans, and baseball fans in particular. Renditions of the speech from the movie Field of Dreams, a soliloquy sometimes known as “The People Will Come” speech. I have three versions of it here — one you […]

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That was the result this week of an Asian Football Confederation third-round qualifying match for the 2018 World Cup. Mahmoud Al Mawas scored in the 54th minute to give Syria the one-goal victory before 37,000 at Shaanxi Province Stadium in China. The match is unlikely to have a bearing on which four or five Asian […]

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I did not plan on making the Chicago Cubs a topic for two days running, but today it struck me anew that I really would prefer they not win a World Series for the first time since 1908 … Because I love, love, love long championship droughts, and when it comes to North American sports, […]

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I woke up convinced the San Francisco Giants had won the National League wild-card playoff game the previous night. This decade, that’s what the Giants do in the postseason. Any game they need to win, they win. Including this one, a 3-0 victory in New York over the Mets, thanks to a three-run home run […]

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Gianni Infantino, who grew up one Swiss town away from his infamous predecessor as Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, seems to be equally prone to silly or unworkable ideas. (We can only hope he does not prove as venal.) Infantino campaigned for the presidency earlier this year on a platform that called for the World Cup […]

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This is big. Take a deep breath, American soccer fans. A Yank has taken charge of an English Premier League team … a team in the world’s most popular sports league. Bob Bradley is the new coach of Swansea City, the Wales-based club that already is at risk of relegation, seven matches into the season. […]

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It was only yesterday — October of 1988 — that the Dodgers won the World Series. They beat the Oakland Athletics in five games, behind Kirk Gibson (a Game 1 homer you may have heard about) and right-hander Orel Hershiser, who was pretty much unhittable in winning twice. That was the sixth Major League Baseball […]

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