Super Bowl Sunday is, in the Middle East … Sunday. The first day of the work week. Nothing super about it, unless you’re an American or a Canadian or one of those rare non-North Americans who are interested in the NFL.
In the UAE, the big story in world football today (after the Chelsea-Manchester United game, […]

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Seventy-four are dead in Egypt, according to the government, after violence between soccer fans of the Cairo club Al Ahly and the Al Masry club of Port Said.
This is by no means the first instance of dozens of deaths at soccer matches in the past three decades. In a three-piece package in The National for […]

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Zinedine Zidane is remembered almost as much for headbutting Marco Materazzi of Italy in the World Cup final in 2006 as he is for his years as a great player.
But how notorious would he be … if he had headbutted the referee, instead?
A midfielder for the Al Ahli team in Dubai did just that, apparently, […]

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The weather is the No. 1 topic of discussion in the United Arab Emirates at the moment, and not for the usual reasons. Instead of this being one of the hottest places in the world … we are struggling to deal with Arctic temps. Arctic, I tell you.
Like 56 … 55 … 54 … 53 […]

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This is hardly noticed in the particularly British (or Indian) parts of the world, but basketball probably is the second-most popular game on the planet.
I know that several sports have made that claim (from volleyball to team handball to ping-pong, etc), but hoops probably is the real No. 2. Plus, a survey conducted last March […]

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I thought the noise was unbearable in that moment in time when beepers ruled the land, 20-some years ago.
They would go off in a press conference, and everyone but the perpetrator would be looking around, staring daggers at the idiot who had forgotten to turn off his beeper, which was now squawking.
Now, of course, it […]

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The United Arab Emirates is a distant doppelganger to Southern California, when it comes to cars. They love their wheels here. Love them. Mass transit here is buses. Not a rail line in the country, that I know of, though the government apparently is considering a high-speed rail link between the country’s major coastal cities. […]

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I’ve written fairly often about Diego Maradona. I know that. Almost unavoidable. El Diego coaches the Al Wasl team up in Dubai, and I cover a lot of domestic soccer/football here in the UAE. So Diego comes up a lot.
We are trying to find the latest answer to the great sports question: How rare is […]

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It was about 5 a.m. at this end of the Arabian Peninsula when Tim Tebow hooked up with Demaryius Thomas on the 80-yard scoring pass on the first play of overtime, beating the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-23 in the playoffs.
By the time I got to the offices of The National later in the morning, something odd […]

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Well, 6.6 pounds lighter, to be exact. And it didn’t involve violent illness or amputation.
You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I weigh myself fairly regularly. Not that any of us really need to do that. Because if the clothes that used to fit don’t fit anymore … we’ve lost weight. Or, far […]

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