If you asked young Emirati males to name their five favorite activities, at least two of them would be watching soccer and driving cars. Emiratis, you may have deduced, are the Arabs who live here in the United Arab Emirates. They constitute about 15 percent of the population but about 98 percent of the actual […]

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Took me, what, three plane rides between Qatar and the UAE to realize that the airport code for Doha could be an homage to Homer Simpson. Yes, the code is … DOH No exclamation mark, though they may as well put one on there and be in on the joke. “The Simpsons” gets pretty wide […]

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Good game. Nice atmosphere. Stadium was almost full, more than 37,000, including about 5,000 totally-into-it Japan fans. Lots of scoring opportunities for both sides. Two complete different styles of soccer, which made it fun. Like a wishbone team against a run-and-shoot team. Japan won on the strength of a 109th-minute goal by an unlikely hero […]

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One of the strangest parts of writing about sports for a living is when a sports event is eclipsed by a news event. Or becomes one. Today, Egypt, the most populous Arab country, is in revolt. And we went ahead and played the third-place game in the Asian Cup in Doha, Qatar … not all […]

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First, I just want to say I saw Uzbekistan’s national team play probably the most important match in the history of the country. I am proud of that. Really. Yes, I know. You’re saying, “Uzbekistan? That’s a real country? You didn’t just make that up, did you?” Yes, it is a real country. If it […]

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Organizers of the Asian Cup, here in Qatar, did what host nations typically do for big sports events. They set up a “cultural night” for the media. Which is a noble but hopeless endeavor. Sports writers/photographers/TV guys are pretty much immune to culture — even from their own country, never mind from yours.

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That was the tack I took for the day-after/look-ahead story out of the Asian Cup semifinals for The National. You can see that story here. The idea being that Japan is as old school as the Asian Football Confederation gets, one of the 12 original members when the AFC was founded in 1954.  And Australia […]

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No, this wasn’t a baseball score. Soccer. Football, for you non-Americans. This was a semifinal match of the Asian Cup (I wanted to call it “the Oz-Uz game”), and the Aussies trashed Uzbekistan. I’ve seen a lot of soccer by now, but I don’t recall attending one that ended 6-0. I have a vague recollection […]

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I remember when this happened. The process was approved in 2005, the move became final on January 1, 2006. Australia, out of the Oceania Football Confederation … and in to the Asian Football Confederation. It seemed weird to me. Bizarre. A mistake.  If nothing else, geographically. Australia is its own continent. It’s no more a […]

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Both are exotic here. Golf. And rain. And I got some of both today. The European Tour begins its season in the Gulf. First here, in Abu Dhabi, then over to Qatar and Bahrain, then back to the UAE, at Dubai. (Did you know the world’s top-ranked player, Lee Westwood, spends most of his time […]

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