From a blog entry I wrote for The National … (I will return at the end of the item.) The US television network NBC has purchased the rights to air the English Premier League in the American market, and has turned to the new and fictional Tottenham Hotspur coach Ted Lasso to help explain “football” […]

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Most of July has represented a busy intersection of soccer teams in the UAE trying to complete their teams and begin training … and the fasting month of Ramadan. As soccer clubs here become increasingly media savvy, more formal opportunities to meet with clubs and players are staged, and this is the time when clubs […]

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This is a sort of coals to Newcastle story. It seems perverse that someone left Dubai, on the edge of one of the world’s hottest deserts, and flew nearly halfway around the world to Death Valley to run in an ultramarathon. You want sand and blinding heat? In the UAE, step outside and you are […]

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We return now to the Middle East, and particularly the Gulf, where are located some of the most prominent members of Opec — the Organization of Petroeum Exporting Countries. Saudi Arabi, Qatar and the UAE among them. Opec’s collective position in setting prices and regulating the flow of oil has been part of international business […]

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It is that time of year. School is over, summer has seized the country by the throat, Ramadan is on the way … and seemingly half the people in the UAE are headed for an airport. We at The National did a story this week about a rise in airline bookings this summer — up […]

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The condition known as “Delhi belly” is familiar in this part of the world, a reference to a form of traveler’s diarrhea, in this case picked up while in India (capital: New Delhi). It’s the regional equivalent of Mexico’s Montezuma’s revenge. A story in The National today, however, is about another form of Delhi belly […]

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Like Dubai, Abu Dhabi has an airport where most people alight only to catch another plane. The UAE is at a sort of crossroads of the Old World. If you want to go from Moscow south to South Africa, you may well change planes in the UAE. Going from Europe to the east of Asia? […]

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In a previous lifetime, an exchange student taken into our household gave me a gift. It was a garish necktie, quite long, with diagonal stripes of red, white and, I think, green. Maybe blue, too. Pretty sure I never wore it; it was that startling. I remember it being encased in a plastic sleeve and […]

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They play baseball here. Well, not here here, “here” being Abu Dhabi. To my knowledge, Abu Dhabi has one softball field … zero baseball fields. “Fields” of any sort are at a premium here in the desert, and heavily in demand by soccer players. So we have no ball fields here; none dedicated to baseball, […]

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This is a match made in Emirati heaven. Tearing around the French countryside in high-end sports cars for hours and hours. Till you literally can’t stand driving 175 mph anymore. Le Mans, how had you never met the UAE?

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