No. Really. Al Jazira of Abu Dhabi and the UAE … will play Real Madrid of Spain in the semifinals of the 2017 Club World Cup on Wednesday night. In Zayed Sports City, in the capital. This is the Madrid of Cristiano Ronaldo and 12 European championships. And the Jazira of Ali Mabkhout, twice champions […]

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Think back to the Los Angeles Rams’ 2016 NFL season. Prize draft pick Jared Goff was a mess. When he finally got a chance to play, in the final seven games of the season, the rookie quarterback looked clueless and panicked, conditions that rule out competence. And, yes, he was 0-7 as a starter. The […]

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The story of Shohei Ohtani just got a bit more fantastical. The 23-year-old Japanese star who seems to be channeling the spirit of Babe Ruth with his demonstrated star quality as both a pitcher and hitter, has signed with a Major League Baseball team. And it is not the New York Yankees or Boston Red […]

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We have watched the mixed herds of sheep and goats in our little town over the past year and a half. Usually from our balcony while they are cropping the grass or leaves in the open land behind the house. Never was I close enough to them to at least consider how I might evade […]

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Yeah, more LaVar. I don’t plan to do that. But we have so many teachable moments involved here that we feel the gravitational pull … of the worst Basketball Dad in the history of the game. A Bleacher Report story, by a reporter based in Israel, where European basketball is a big thing, offers little […]

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French music is strange. France is a large country, with lots and lots of history, including a fair share of celebrated composers of classical music, especially over the past 150 years — Debussy, Ravel, Bizet, Delibes, Offenbach, etc. But French pop music, at least to the expat’s ear, seems to have ended with Charles Trenet […]

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In conversations with journalists, over the years, I have found a common denominator: A significant percentage of them were thinking about journalism — and even practicing it — at a young age. This comes to mind after seeing a call from officials of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, later this month in Abu Dhabi, for […]

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For a time, I could not help but feel some sympathy, and a little admiration, for LaVar Bell and his big plans for his sons and for himself. Here was a father deeply (very, very deeply) involved with his sons’ lives, overseeing their training and practice in an effort to see all three of them […]

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On the way back to Spain from Portugal, we left the little town of Luz and took a short detour through the “big city” in this part of the Algarve region — Lagos, population 30,000. What originally drew my attention was the town’s name — also the name of the biggest city (and former capital) […]

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Twice, I have seen Lionel Messi play at Camp Nou. In 180 minutes of La Liga play witnessed by moi, he has scored three goals (and Luis Suarez has another) … but FC Barcelona did not win on either occasion. The first Camp Nou match for me was a 2-2 draw with Real Madrid in […]

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