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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The day after the end of a season is when, by the laws of print journalism, we are required to do a retrospective. The Pro League season ended Sunday, so for the Tuesday a.m. newspaper we printed our all-star team and a look back at the key factor in Al Jazira winning its first league […]

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I wasn’t sure we would get the Champions League final in Abu Dhabi. Seems like we don’t get all that much on TV, sports-wise, without paying lots of dirhams, and we didn’t do that with our TV package. But we did get it, on three Al Jazeera sports stations, and it was fascinating to watch […]

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This has gotten nutty. Everything Fifa does as an international body is kinda wacky, but they are topping themsevles day by day. The latest: Fifa is calling on presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam and fellow executive committee member Jack Warner to speak at an investigate hearing into possible bribery. This has to do with the […]

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For my weekly commentary that runs with the two-page “Pro League package” in The National … I had decided to do a roundup of “what others said about Diego Maradona coming to the UAE.” I expected that the most famous footballer of the past two generations would get all sorts of special attention. I was […]

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This was the big story today, and The National was all over it. Diego Maradona, “El Jefe Loco,” as I preferred to refer to him while I was writing the countdown to South Africa blog, has signed a two-year deal to coach the UAE Pro League club Al Wasl, starting with the 2011/12 season. First, […]

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Maybe it’s Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium. I’ve seen quite a bit of wacky stuff go down there. Two riveting matches in a week. The aforementioned Jazira 5, Dhafra 3 in the Pro League, and now an Etisalat Cup final between Al Shabab and Al Ain that featured three goals from the 86th minute or later. […]

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You read that right. Al Ahli was champion of the UAE Pro League in 2009 but flopped badly in 2009-10, sinking to eighth and losing, shamefully, to a New Zealand semi-pro team in the Club World Cup. Ahli officials blew up the team last summer and opened this season with Fabio Cannavaro in the middle […]

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It’s a curious fact here: Local sports news dries up markedly once we hit April. The European golf tour has come and gone, twice. The men and women of world tennis have been through the UAE with back-to-back events in Dubai. A batch of Premier League clubs dropped by for a little bit of sun […]

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