When the Al Wasl club of Dubai and the UAE Pro League announced in June that they had hired Diego Maradona to be their coach … I wrote that “this will not be dull.” Got that one right. But that was shooting fish in a barrel. El Diego, FIFA’s co-player of the century (with Pele), […]

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So, while I had my head turned, Al Jazira fired its coach for being too harsh or too lenient or perhaps too Belgian, Baniyas owned up to the fact that it owed significant chunks of money to a couple of players, and David O’Leary, the Irishman who coached in Dubai last season, is going to […]

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David Trezeguet. You may have heard of him. Played for France’s World Cup champions in 1998. Spent a decade at Juventus and scored 138 goals. Also got the golden goal (remember the short history of that arrangement?) in the 2000 European championships, winning it 2-1 for France over Italy. Well, Trezeguet is 34 now, and […]

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I have several recurring dreams. In one of them, I am on the ground, and for some reason I look up in the sky to see a plane in trouble. In my dream, I seem to be the first person on the ground to have noticed this, and I watch the plane come down from […]

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Mark down Luca Toni as the latest old guy to realize he can make a few bucks in the UAE. Like, say, Fabio Cannavaro, David Trezeguet and yours truly. And, as another old guy who has come to the UAE to extend his career, I say: “Well done, Luca!” So, where in the UAE does […]

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Zinedine Zidane is remembered almost as much for headbutting Marco Materazzi of Italy in the World Cup final in 2006 as he is for his years as a great player. But how notorious would he be … if he had headbutted the referee, instead? A midfielder for the Al Ahli team in Dubai did just […]

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I’ve written fairly often about Diego Maradona. I know that. Almost unavoidable. El Diego coaches the Al Wasl team up in Dubai, and I cover a lot of domestic soccer/football here in the UAE. So Diego comes up a lot. We are trying to find the latest answer to the great sports question: How rare […]

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I addressed the question, in the headline above, in a comment piece for The National. Diego Maradona is the coach at Al Wasl, one of the top clubs in the UAE. As noted earlier on this blog, the FIFA co-player of the century (with Pele) is extraordinarily popular here. Loved to death. But can the […]

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The world of professional football (international variety) seems enormous. Countries you couldn’t find on a map have professional leagues. Countries you’ve never heard of have leagues. Countries like England and Germany have about 28 tiers of leagues. I’ve been writing from the UAE for more than two years and, admit it, most of you have […]

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One of the touted summer signings in UAE soccer was of Jakson Coelho, familiarily known as “Jaja” … a Brazilian attacking midfielder who had been playing in Turkey with Trabzonspor. Al Ahli, one of the Dubai sides, signed him to a three-year, 4.5 million euro ($5.9 million) deal. That’s real money. The idea was to pair […]

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