Three-plus decades in this business, and I still can be surprised by what can happen when you call someone. I was working on a piece about the future of Mahdi Ali, the capable and popular UAE Olympic soccer coach who led his team to the London Olympics, and I decided to check in with the […]

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This is a bizarre story, now that I review it again. Because I could not get credentialed for the Summer Olympics in the way I have for 14 Olympiads before this one — with an actual “E” (press) credential — I became worried about getting into events at London 2012. Specifically, into UAE soccer events […]

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From 1982 until 1992, I visited London quite often. At least four extended stays in the city and the surrounding countryside. Twice, to cover Wimbledon, from start to finish, in 1985 and 1986. However, before today, the last time I was in London was 1993, and that was soccer-related, too. I was on my way […]

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A few hours ago, I watched the entirety of the Opening Ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympics. I was more than a bit surprised to last the 3 hours and 50 minutes, running till 12:46 a.m., here in England, considering I was alternately bored and puzzled. It must have been the caffeine in the diet […]

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It took four days, but we apparently found the restaurant district of Manchester — a little to the west of Market Street, in an area of short streets and small hotels. And we ate at a pub that might even be semi-famous — Sam’s Chop House, established 1872. You’ve heard about the preferences of the […]

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The UAE Olympic soccer team’s Summer 2012 European Tour continues, jumping from Austria, via Munich, to the English city of Manchester where, I am happy to report, it is not raining. (Turns out that Manchester actually has fewer rainy days, and gets less rain than is typical in England. But last I had heard, rain […]

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Andy Murray is in the final at Wimbledon. This is news, in the queen’s country. Mainly because Liz the Deuce is 86 and seems to have been alive for ever … but even she was only a girl of 11 when Britain last put a man in the Wimby final, that being the wonderfully named […]

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The streets in the 17th arrondisement of Paris had gone dead by 8 p.m. The Italian restaurant down the block was operating, but it seemed as if it was open only to sell take-out pizzas (like the three we bought) to people in the neighborhood. You could feel a sort of hunkering down, and a […]

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Is this well-known in the U.S.? I tend to think it is not. The Manchester City football team that plays in the English Premier League … that just won the English Premier League … is owned by an Abu Dhabi sheikh, Mansour bin Zayed. So when City was trying to nail down the Premier League […]

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The Rams moved to St. Louis and became dead to me. Never appreciated the Raiders gangsta thing, and then they went back to Oakland. The Dodgers fell under the spell of the necromancer Frank McCourt. Never was an Angels guy. (I still consider them the Johnny-come-latelies who play 10-man ball.) Don’t care about hockey. Major […]

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