One of the strangest parts of writing about sports for a living is when a sports event is eclipsed by a news event. Or becomes one. Today, Egypt, the most populous Arab country, is in revolt. And we went ahead and played the third-place game in the Asian Cup in Doha, Qatar … not all […]

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First, I just want to say I saw Uzbekistan’s national team play probably the most important match in the history of the country. I am proud of that. Really. Yes, I know. You’re saying, “Uzbekistan? That’s a real country? You didn’t just make that up, did you?” Yes, it is a real country. If it […]

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Organizers of the Asian Cup, here in Qatar, did what host nations typically do for big sports events. They set up a “cultural night” for the media. Which is a noble but hopeless endeavor. Sports writers/photographers/TV guys are pretty much immune to culture — even from their own country, never mind from yours.

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Two consecutive days of it on this blog. Let’s go for three. For the Tuesday a.m. newspaper I did a column about the 1993 Asian World Cup qualifying tournament, which was held in Doha. An event I actually covered. (Gannett News Service; the good old days; stuff like that happened.) It was wild, six countries, […]

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This is a topic not one person in 100 understands, including most journalists who work inside the office. The logistics of writing sports — how you get to the venue and how you file on deadline. It’s logistics. Lots of it. And these logistics dominate your thoughts and darken your dreams and engage your adrenal […]

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Did an over-and-back to see the UAE national team play Iraq in the second game of Group D competition at the Asian Cup. As I may have mentioned yesterday, the night before the match, I had been struck by a sense that this would be an important game. For good or ill. I became convinced […]

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I said the other day I miss watching college football bowl games. And I do. But some weird stuff, some disturbing stuff, is going on over there. Changes I was not completely up to speed on because the disconnect between U.S. college football and the Middle East is just about total. To wit:

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I believe many of us like to think we’re glass-half-empty people. Doesn’t a sort of world-weariness make us seem, oh, more sophisticated? More realistic? Cock-eyed optimism … doesn’t the “cock-eyed” tell us all we need to know about optimists? Certainly, in the news biz, where we document famine and pestilence and death and destruction, optimists […]

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Hard to envision a more exotic place, really. Papua New Guinea is the eastern half of that big island north of Australia. The independent country, as opposed to the western half of the island, which is part of Indonesia. What images do you conjure when you hear “Papua New Guinea?” Tropical rainforests. Towering mountains. Exotic […]

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I have been organizing coverage of the national soccer league here, as well as the UAE’s various national teams … and the country is on the threshold of some really significant achievements. Which says something, considering that in a country of 7 million the national teams come only from those with citizenship — Emiratis — […]

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