My subconscious must have wanted to see this game. It began at 5 a.m. UAE time, and normally I’m in a coma about then, about four hours from stirring … but I bolted up at about 5:45, turned on our squirrely TV, saw the Yanks walking off for halftime … and I followed it to […]

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Let’s be honest: Not many soccer games happen in North America that anyone is all that crazy to see, in person. The occasional Mexican League game. The rare Major League Soccer game. Some of the World Cup qualifiers. And we’re about done. It’s not like the Old World, where every country has a national league […]

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I had noticed this but hadn’t given it great thought. Filipinos have unusual given names, or often go by nicknames. It probably was Benjamin, our preferred Filipino taxi driver, who brought this home to me, on the shores of the UAE.

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Such a strange story. Blowing up the domestic football league in order to save it. As we got into Day 3, things began to settle down. By now, Football Association sources (and the FA is now in charge of the league) seemed to spend much of their time telling us about all the things that […]

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Not something that happens every day in world football. The government has a meeting and a minister decides to dissolve the domestic professional league. Bang. Gone. It is one of those “what did you say?” moments. When you hear something so completely unexpected, your brain doesn’t grasp it right off. Or refuses to. That moment […]

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If I were asked to compile a top-10 events that most interest Emiratis as a group… I’m not sure I could do it. Well, I could come up with a list, but I’d be bringing completely random concepts off the top of my head by the time I got to No. 5 or 6. “Shopping […]

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The rumors had been that Fabio Cannavaro might be one-and-done as a player in the UAE’s Pro League. The man may have been Fifa Player of the Year as recently as 2006, but the little Italian looked pretty much done this year while playing for the Dubai club Al Ahli. He wasn’t awful, exactly. He […]

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Radio is a curious medium. So retro yet so oddly compelling, if you can be troubled to turn off the TV and shut down the laptop and just let the words wash over your brain. My grandmother was a huge fan of the radio. Whenever I visited her home, she would be puttering around in […]

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One day I looked up … and seemingly every young guy in UAE soccer is rocking big hair. Let’s link you to some of them.

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I am not a big hockey fan. I’ve covered parts of three Stanley Cup finals, the Kings-Canadiens in 1993, the Ducks-Devils in 2003 and Ducks-Senators in 2007, and found the experience interesting enough … but I generally will not make a point of watching a final that does not involve SoCal teams. That changed tonight […]

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