Almost every sports fan in the world is interested in his or her national soccer team. Certainly applies in the UAE, where the most casual of supporters can tell you where and when the UAE appeared in its first (and still only) World Cup. That would be Italy, 1990. The UAE went out in three […]

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Brazil is big on referring to athletes by just one name. Which I don’t have a problem with, generally, and especially not for athletes. Their given names,  Portuguese-based most of them, tend to be elaborate affairs. Pele, the most famous Brazilian of them all, was christened Edson Arantes de Nascimento, which is a lot of […]

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This is pretty good stuff, if I say so myself. However, I didn’t link to the Europe part of this, a couple of days ago, and South America is coming up for Tuesday morning. So let’s catch up with that. Got any guesses at our top three venues for Europe and South America? Let’s link […]

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We at The National are selecting — and writing about — the planet’s best places to see a sports event. Stadiums, arenas, race tracks (horse and motors), even a “Gulf.” This was the idea of Robert Mashburn, the sports editor here, who had a brainstorm a few months back to rank the top 10 venues […]

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My newspaper, The National, here in Abu Dhabi, has one of those “most-read” lists on its website. One for each department. News. Business. Sports. These lists are handy, whatever the news outlet. It allows you to discover quickly which stories are getting clicked on most often, and lets you catch up to stuff you might […]

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It is being reported that Pat Haden will succeed Mike Garrett as athletic director at USC, and let see if I can summarize my first impressions of that move. “Inspired … a perfect decision … a great guy … a very very smart man … a classy dude … absolutely the right man for the […]

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The day after The Decision, that contemporary monument to bad ideas (New Coke, anyone?), I offered to write a commentary/analysis on LeBron James’s decision to commit to Miami and abandon Cleveland. I ended up trashing LeBron and The Decision … in a column I linked to a few days ago.  But before I realized I […]

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We in Abu Dhabi, on the other side of the world, have been following the Saga of LeBron James. Riveting stuff, right? Where will the world’s greatest player never to have won a championship play next year? And does he have space left anywhere on his body (that isn’t his face) for a tattoo perhaps […]

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In the run-up to the World Cup, I wrote — early and often — about the coaching disaster that was Diego Maradona. He somehow had Argentina in peril of not qualifying for the World Cup by dint of bizarre lineups, erratic behavior and bad results against some of South America’s lesser sides. I became convinced […]

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On Day 22 of the 2010 World Cup, “Holland 2, Brazil 1” figured to have no rivals for the attention of the soccer planet. Ha. Uruguay defeating Ghana on penalties in a madcap match was the story of of the day, for a variety of reasons. Sportsmanship, the Laws of the Game, villainous Uruguay, unlucky […]

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