In a small country, the “small stuff” in sports counts for a lot. If you have a small population or a poor one, odds are pretty good you aren’t going to have a lot of success in regional — never mind global — sports. And that explains why the Under 23 soccer game tomorrow between […]

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Fans (of a certain age) of the U.S. soccer team remember what this was like. The national team would play a game against a small nation from far away, and the crowd would be lousy … and perhaps a majority of the people there would be partisans of the visiting nation. I distinctly remember the […]

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  I hate sandstorms. It might be the biggest drawback to living in the UAE. Even worse than the six months of brutal heat. I am in my third winter in Abu Dhabi, and I was duly impressed by my first sandstorm experience, back in 2010. Winter is sandstorm season.  Sounds counter-intuitive, but we get […]

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I was in Tommy Lasorda’s office at Dodger Stadium for the infamous “Kingman’s performance?!?” rant of May 14, 1978. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was not the Dodgers beat writer, and I can imagine I was covering the game only because we were giving a day off to our regular guy. Anyway, Dave […]

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I’m as amazed by Jeremy Lin as anyone else. Coming from pretty much nowhere to ring up five consecutive 20-points-plus games and lead (yes, lead) the New York Knicks to five consecutive victories. His also is a story of multiculturalism, and demonstrates the global reach of the NBA. Thus, I decided to write about Jeremy […]

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I have several recurring dreams. In one of them, I am on the ground, and for some reason I look up in the sky to see a plane in trouble. In my dream, I seem to be the first person on the ground to have noticed this, and I watch the plane come down from […]

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Actually, I will take credit for this. The entire staff came in one day last month for a meeting with the executive editor, and I remembered some instances in the past where the sudden arrival in the same spot of a group with a common goal but far-flung addresses … seemed like a good opportunity […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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