This was a first: A Briton asking me to write a story about Landon Donovan.
The news peg is that Landon is back in England, for two months, on loan with the Premier League side Everton, and he seems likely to play his first match (in his second Everton go-round) Wednesday night.
Here is that piece, which […]

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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 man coach? And […]

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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 no clear […]

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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 him […]

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Hard to overstate how big the arrival of Diego Maradona on these shores has been. The former Argentina superstar and national team coach, whose life almost was extinguished by drug abuse a decade-plus ago … has been received with open arms in the UAE and, especially, Dubai … and he seems to be returning the […]

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This surprised me a bit. Landon Donovan going back to Everton, the English Premier League side in Liverpool, on a two-month loan spanning January and February, during the Major League Soccer offseason.
Why should this have puzzled me? For at least two reasons.

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A secret I now will reveal.
The final few days in Paris, when it had gotten rainy, and even darker … I was looking forward to getting back to Abu Dhabi. Seriously. My preference, there at the end, was to leave Paris … and go to Abu Dhabi. Yes. Seems a bit daft.
But we are entering […]

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At a recent soccer match in Dubai, I heard a young fan of the Al Ahli club launch a tirade in Arabic that (I’m pretty sure ) was aimed at club executives. Ahli had just lost a match and isn’t having a good season.
He carried on for quite some time, at a volume sufficient to […]

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We interrupt this Paris travelogue to weigh in on Tim Tebow.
Yes, I may be the last person holding U.S. citizenship to be heard on the topic. In part, that’s because so many others reacted so quickly and so vociferously that I felt no need to join the shouting.
I like Tim Tebow. I admire Tim Tebow. […]

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The UAE is having a hard time in soccer/football. Which wouldn’t be as big an issue if the game weren’t the national sport.
The senior team is suffering through its most difficult and disappointing World Cup qualifying, with five defeats in five matches, and was eliminated before the final round of Brazil 2014 qualifying. The kind […]

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