Yes, I was the guy who suggested this match could end 4-0, and added 7-0 might be OK if the UAE club held mighty Real Madrid scoreless for, say, a half-hour. I underestimated Al Jazira, the Arabian Gulf League champions, in a semifinal of the Fifa Club World Cup. And perhaps Real did, too. But […]

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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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If it sometimes seems as if American sports tend to cycle through the same few dozen coaches … well, it’s pretty much the case. How else to explain Larry Brown, Buck Showalter, Marty Schottenheimer, et al? But international soccer coaches take it to a whole ‘nother level. Some of these guys have coached at 10, […]

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In six-plus years based in Abu Dhabi, I saw this kid play dozens of times in person, hundreds of times when we add TV exposure … and it seems to me a highly justified decision by one on the web’s most important soccer sites: Omar Abdulrahman of Al Ain and the United Arab Emirates, best […]

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The most authentic sports experience in the United Arab Emirates is anything pertaining to the domestic soccer league — the Arabian Gulf League. It is a league overseen by Emiratis, largely staffed by Emiratis, featuring clubs overwhelmingly made up of Emirati footballers, and the whole of the league is largely watched by Emiratis, whether on […]

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El Jefe Loco, as I liked to call him while writing my countdown-sa2010 blog, back when Diego Maradona was coaching Argentina ahead of the 2010 World Cup, is off the unemployment rolls. He has been hired to coach a club in the UAE. The biggest and best? Al Ain or Al Ahli? Well, no. One […]

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I settled on Al Jazira as my favorite soccer team, in my six-plus years in Abu Dhabi. In large part because the club was about 200 yards from where I lived and about 300 yards from where I worked. A club considered one of the biggest in the nation was awfully handy to me; I […]

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His given name was Luiz Carlos Saroli, but he was known by the informal Caio Junior, going back to his playing days in Portugal and his native Brazil. And that is how we referred to him in the pages of The National while he coached in the UAE. He died in a plane crash tonight, […]

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It was three years ago that I saw Ricardo Quaresma at what must have been his low ebb. This would have been in Abu Dhabi, in the stands at Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium, where I watching the final of the President’s Cup — which pitted Al Ahli and Al Shabab on a stultifying May evening. […]

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This falls under the heading of a particularly broad category of human events. To wit: What were they thinking?!? Someone at a BMW dealership and someone at Al Ain FC, the most celebrated soccer club in the UAE, thought it would be a good idea to do a commercial spot. So far so good. However, […]

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