I look forward to two more-or-less regularly scheduled social events each year in Abu Dhabi. 1. The staff party on the anniversary of the founding of The National newspaper. 2. The birthday party of a spouse of one of the newspaper staff. The latter was held tonight, and as usual it brought together an agreeable […]

[Read more →]

Not sure I’ve ever given an idea of what it is like for a sports writer to cover a soccer game, here in the UAE. Some of it will seem familiar to American journos. But some of it is not at all similar to your experience in a U.S. press box — from being served […]

[Read more →]

Big stir here, over the new soccer stadium in Al Ain. A three-day festival, a lot of pomp and ceremony, lots of conversation about how spectacular the Hazza bin Zayed Stadium is. And it is. It’s quite nice. Fairly striking, from the outside (artist’s rendering, above), when it is lit up with Al Ain’s predominant […]

[Read more →]

Expats come and expats go, in the UAE. And especially in soccer. The South American or African introduced amid fanfare when a transfer window comes open … often is dumped a half-season later. It happens because UAE teams depend so heavily on foreigners to score goals, and goal scoring is such an easily measured number. […]

[Read more →]

Americans of a certain age remember the Selective Service Act — the draft — with fear and loathing. During the 1960s, the Vietnam Era, the draft was talked about relentlessly by males over the age of 16. What to do about it. How to avoid it. Richard Nixon is not remembered fondly as a president, […]

[Read more →]

* And my realization that the league has changed, probably forever. For various technical and ESPN-related issues (their abandonment of the Europe and Middle East markets during the summer), I had not seen an NFL game this season. Maybe a few seconds of video, here and there, but not one game from start to finish. […]

[Read more →]

Most native English speakers believe they speak un-accented English. It is everyone else who has an accent. Poor things. For all but the least self-aware, however, comes the eventual realization that … we all have accents. The only determination left to make is what fraction of other English speakers will have trouble understanding you. In […]

[Read more →]

This was a press box thing. The saying went something like, “He has a face made for radio.” Meaning that a person might have been an expert on some topic, maybe interesting enough to get a gig on TV — except for that mug. And then the second part of it, and maybe I invented […]

[Read more →]

A few of these surprised me. Starting with No. 1. Other surprises came from the cities not on the list. These are the 10 most heavily traveled routes, leaving from Abu Dhabi, per Etihad Airways, the government-owned, Abu Dhabi-based carrier — which just had a record year, as this National story notes, by number of […]

[Read more →]

The FA Cup. Few in North America have a clear idea of what this is about. Aside from hipsters or kids who studied abroad for a year and now believe they are entitled to make generalizations about European “football” to their oh-so-sheltered friends back home. Anyway, the FA (Football Association) Cup is a soccer tournament […]

[Read more →]