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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* 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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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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A huge day in 2014 World Cup qualifying. Four years ago, I would have been up all night watching games to update the Countdown to South Africa blog. (Perhaps the best World Cup blog seen by … almost no one!) In this case, I woke early enough, in Abu Dhabi, to see the late games […]

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If you have watched the TV sitcom Seinfeld, you remember the Bubble Boy episode. That was George Constanza’s description for the kid with immunity issues, who spent his days inside a plastic bubble. Over the past year-plus, the UAE has had its own “boy” — the inevitably named “Fear-of-Flying Boy”. And local media, including The […]

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Yes. We are in Kenya’s capital. Site of the terror attacks at the city’s biggest mall last week. I prefer to think it isn’t as brazen as it may seem, from the western side of the Atlantic. Isn’t it generally safest right after a major attack? And wouldn’t it take a few weeks for a […]

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Maybe this is a sign that I have been out of the country for too long. Or maybe for long enough. I really don’t care what happens in the National Football League.

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I knew Pat Haden, a little, more than three decades ago. I covered the Los Angeles Rams for four seasons for the San Bernardino Sun, and Haden was in his second season when I got on the beat, in 1977. Haden was great to work with. Bright and accessible and honest. And, of course, a […]

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