A reader sent along this paragraph from a blogger who goes by Left Coast Sports Babe. “Big sports news across the pond in England. BBC calling it maybe the biggest FA Cup shocker ever – Bradford City comes back from 2-0 down to beat Chelsea 4-2. And in the U.S. people are going, “who’s Bradford, […]

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I refuse to pay for advanced TV packages, here in Abu Dhabi. I could say it’s a matter of principle — I will not pay outrageous rates just to see all the Arabian Gulf League soccer — but it’s mostly about two concepts: –Not being able to get ESPN, at any price; –Not being interested […]

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Some guys have trouble with change. Many of them are sports writers. Something I stumbled across while looking up something else: An 11-point rant by a professional journalist, in London-based Daily Telegraph, on “why the Super Bowl sucks”. We won’t address every point, because mostly this is about anti-Americanism, which flows wide and deep through […]

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I realized the other day that the box our vacuum cleaner came in … has lasted longer than the vacuum it held. The vacuum pretty much fell to pieces, after five years, and I threw it out. A day later, I noted that the box is still being used as a storage place for shoes. […]

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So, Steven Gerrard replaces Landon Donovan with the LA Galaxy. Pretty much how it works out, yes? Landon goes off to do charity work (really, I think he will) … and Major League Soccer replaces him with Liverpool’s golden oldie midfielder, a guy who looks like the most boring soccer dad in your neighborhood. A […]

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This really is crazy. While the rest of Europe’s prominent soccer leagues take off at least two weeks during the Christmas/New Years period … the English Premier League goes into overdrive, during what they call “the festive season”. The Premier League celebrates by going into hyperdrive. It is madness.

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It often turns out this way, in the news biz. Weeks of making something out of nothing. And then a stretch of time where you have big events colliding on the calendar. This is one of those “colliding big events” weeks, here in the UAE. Four events that pretty safely fall into our top 10 […]

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I didn’t plan not to like Liverpool Football Club. It just worked out that way. Perhaps inevitably, because I came in contact with several of their fans. As an American who paid scant attention to the Premier League until I went to work in the Old World … I had no violent opinions on much of […]

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It was one of the most absurd moments in recent English Premier League history. Arsene Wenger, 64, advancing on Jose Mourinho, 51, on the sidelines of the Chelsea vs Arsenal match yesterday — and shoving his rival manager in the midst of Chelsea’s 2-0 victory over Wenger’s Arsenal. It was silly on a number of […]

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Soccer is pervasive in England. You can hardly go over a hill in that part of the British Isles without bumping into another soccer team. FiveThirtyEight.com rose to prominence while appearing in the New York Times, tracking likely outcomes in elections for the past 10 years or so. It’s a generic website now, with a […]

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