I had never been impressed with Diego Maradona as a coach, which anyone who read my South Africa countdown 2010 blog can attest. This is a guy who can barely function in life … but I’m not even going to broach those issues. It was Maradona the manager who almost achieved the impossible — failing […]

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This differs markedly from the list in the item below — because this one includes the 40-plus foreigners in the league. The number of foreigners playing in the Pro League here in the UAE is up to a potential 48 this season (from 36 a year ago) because the league chose to add a fourth […]

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If I were put in charge of domestic soccer here in the UAE, a job I somehow doubt will be offered to me, one of the first matters I would attend to? Making sure that big news stories are not allowed to happen on the same day. In the past four months, the UAE twice […]

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The guy who laid me off 3.5 years ago had his own moment with the sharp end of the “consolidation” side of print journalism last week. That is to say, he’s out of newspapers and apparently is unemployed. Here is the typically code-riddled e-mail to the people who worked for him:

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I am back in Abu Dhabi but still talking to people around me about Beirut and my three days there, which were jammed with enough events and anecdotes and revelations to have felt like three weeks. Before we go any further, let’s link to a discussion that a Beirut-based blogger told me about, a discussion […]

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When you are the visiting team in Beirut, you know your night did not go well when some of the local citizens let off a few rounds of celebratory gunfire after the score goes final. It probably also was not a good night when your coach is fired about 90 minutes after the game. Which […]

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Well, it hasn’t been dull. I am trying to dash this off before the UAE match against Lebanon, in Beirut, gets started. I am in the bowels of a battered stadium with lots and lots of history, much of it not good (war and destruction and refugees), and just getting here was an expedition. Backing […]

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I’m in Beirut, the “Paris of the East” (well, some people call it that) … and the occasion is the UAE playing Lebanon in a World Cup qualifying match tomorrow night. I had always wanted to come here, and I love covering international soccer games, so it’s all working out quite nicely. (Including the Etihad […]

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For months, it seemed as if Abu Dhabi were slowly emptying out. Day after day, the traffic was a little lighter, the crowds a little less intense. Driving around the town, which often is nightmarish, was easy. It peaked last week, when roads were nearly empty in the middle of the day. But now it’s […]

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Good news. I get ESPN America over here, and I actually can see some college football live for the first time in two years. So it was, tonight, that I remembered that it was Saturday afternoon back home, and I knew the colleges were playing lots of game on the last non-NFL weekend, and the […]

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