In much of Eurasia, Italian soccer was the first external brand seen on local TV. This was in the 1990s, when Europe’s other big leagues were still pretty much off the air. Certainly overseas. Italy, then, filled a programming void, and soccer fans all over the Middle and Far East of Asia, for instance, regularly […]

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Al Jazira is an Abu Dhabi club that has been pretty good for most of a decade but hasn’t been particularly good at sealing deals at the end of the UAE soccer season. In 40 years, the club has one league title (2011), two President Cup championships (2011, 2012) and one Arabian Gulf Cup (2010). […]

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I had forgotten the date. A former colleague sent me an email about it, and yes, he was right. It was 25 years ago today that the U.S. national soccer team recorded the most important victory in the history of American soccer. We can say that without reservation, actually, because soccer was languishing in the […]

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It is abundantly clear on which days the UAE domestic soccer league should play. Thursday night and Friday night. Yet, over the first nine weeks of the current season, only once did the league actually plan for a Thursday-Friday schedule. Which is crazy, and here is why.

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How I managed to be nearly unaware of this book (and not read it) for 15 years is something of a mystery. I should have heard of it, made note of it, bought it and read it in 1999, when it was published. The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, by Joe McGinniss. McGinniss died earlier […]

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We were going to Italy, from Abu Dhabi, to celebrate a significant birthday, and it seemed a perfect occasion to invite some of those near and dear to us to a sort of moveable feast. In Italy. It began in Florence, moved to Siena for Il Palio and since Saturday night has continued at Villa […]

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We have been joined in San Gimignano by an Italian couple and their two young children. After a dinner (barbecued sausages and a half-dozen skewers of meat and peppers) and some very nice wine our visitors brought us, we sat down in the living room to talk about life in the UAE … and it […]

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Three of us decided to take a walk through the rolling countryside surrounding San Gimignano. The area practically calls out for a hike. Lots of up and down, but most of it not really intense, and it generally stays off paved roads — in favor of dirt tracks or rutted secondary roads leading into dense […]

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Speaking generally, Italy is a country where failure to eat what is put in front of you is often met with disappointment. Sometimes the disappointment is internalized and then becomes a bit aggressive. “You don’t like it?” (Disappointed.) Why not?” (Vaguely accusatory.) While in Florence, at a perfectly adequate restaurant, I did not feel like […]

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The world seems to be shrinking, day by day. More of it seems within reach than ever before. But plenty of nooks and crannies of human existence remain outside our body of knowledge. For instance, the Italian city of San Gimignano.

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