At 8 p.m. Sunday night, Theyab Awana was not particularly well-known even in the UAE. A 21-year-old right-side midfielder for the Baniyas club, a rising player but not quite there yet, he was getting some playing time with the UAE Olympic team and had just made a breakthrough onto the senior national team, though not […]

[Read more →]

This is a country where “going to the mall” not only scratches that national itch to shop … but provides a significant fraction of the “out of the house” entertainment for natives and many expats. We were reintroduced to this tonight, on a trip over to Khalidiya Mall (above), one of the four downtown malls […]

[Read more →]

I’ve gone all in on the Women’s World Cup the past two days. Yesterday I cajoled my cricket-loving British co-workers into tuning the big-screen TV from the England-Sri Lanka series-deciding cricket match … to the England-France women’s quarter-final … and then watched Japan shock Germany, after I was done for the night. Then I wrote […]

[Read more →]

Fabio Cannavaro isn’t leaving us just yet. As we decided a week ago, when the Dubai club Al Ahli filled its foreigner allotment, Cannavaro won’t be playing for Ahli. But rather than pay him off to go away, the club prefers to have him stick around for three years as a coach/adviser. It makes sense, […]

[Read more →]

When you go out on assignment, in sports, in the UAE, a concept you don’t really consider, at first, is this: About 90 percent of the Gulf Arabs you will encounter … will all be wearing kandouras. OK, sure. So what’s the problem?

[Read more →]

It perhaps come as no surprise that the Fourth of July is not a big holiday outside the United States. And especially not on in the UAE, where Yanks are thin on the ground. Not that we didn’t try to do a little something to commemorate the day. But the Fourth here was … Monday, […]

[Read more →]

The heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye was a big deal, on this side of the Atlantic. I’m sure it was not nearly as big an event on the American side of the ocean — which is a major problem for global boxing. After years of wrangling to set up the fight, […]

[Read more →]

I was walking down the street to the tiny apartment hard by Airport Road, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and a thought popped into my head about high school. Happens, sometimes. People tell me I have a good memory. Or maybe I just remember remembering, and I tell them stories about themselves that I […]

[Read more →]

Well, so much for the Fabio Cannavaro experiment. He arrived in the UAE about a year ago to much excitement and acclaim, and with a two-year contract. But his playing career in the country appears to be over, unless Al Ahli, the Dubai club that recruited him, trades him — which seems quite unlikely, given […]

[Read more →]

It was my turn to do our “big” column in the sports section, and I decided that the most topical concept was the U.S.-Mexico soccer match. Normally, I wouldn’t spend much time on this in the UAE. This is a British-oriented sports section with a strong Indian/Pakistani (read: cricket) undertow, and a soccer game in […]

[Read more →]