El Jefe Loco, as I liked to call him while writing my countdown-sa2010 blog, back when Diego Maradona was coaching Argentina ahead of the 2010 World Cup, is off the unemployment rolls. He has been hired to coach a club in the UAE. The biggest and best? Al Ain or Al Ahli? Well, no. One […]

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Never minimize the United Arab Emirates’ ability and willingness to be part of any conversation about overindulging. The country may not have invented wretched excess, but it has embraced it. Take, for instance, the so-called “freakshake”, described in this story in The National newspaper as “basically, oversized, pimped-out milkshakes. … The bigger, the better.” Freakshakes […]

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As fans of the U.S. national team, we have skewed perceptions of what qualifies as hard times. As a fan of the UAE national team, I can vouch for that. For the Americans, World Cup qualifying losses to Mexico and Costa Rica, two of the top sides in the western hemisphere, ranks as a panic […]

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I follow two national soccer teams, the United States and the UAE. Both play twice in the coming week in crucial 2018 World Cup qualifiers. I don’t feel good about either national team’s chances. For reasons that apply to both — key injuries, the pressure to produce results and competent opponents. First, the U.S.

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After leaving the U.S. for Abu Dhabi, in 2009, my interest in college basketball waned. As I noted in blog posts from recent years, while living in the UAE, it requires work to follow the college game from the other side of the world. Too many teams, too many games, too big a time gap […]

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Some odd things happen in the United Arab Emirates and The National newspaper, the English-language publication based in the capital, Abu Dhabi, does a good job of recording them. Today? Cat-killers sentenced to three months of sweeping up at the Dubai zoo … the $10,000 hamburger in (of course) Dubai … and the cardboard faux […]

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If you lack context, this will seem like a bizarre story. This story in The National describes an alleged murder in Dubai that stemmed from the victim being accused of having smelly feet. The word “disproportionate” springs to mind. If smelly feet were a capital crime, most adult males would risk assassination on a regular […]

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Curiously, for the first 44 years of its history, the United Arab Emirates outsourced the making of its money. As in, printing bank notes and minting coins. I know the UAE dirham notes well, having carried them around in my pocket for the six-plus years I lived in the country. I had no idea, however, […]

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What a cultural intersection this is for me! National anthems, the Middle East and military bands. I lived in the United Arab Emirates for more than six years and I covered a lot of international soccer. So I was exposed to the UAE’s military band more than once, just ahead of a game pitting national […]

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Great story out of Italy. FC Crotone, a small club from the deep south of the country, qualified to play in the top-flight Seria A this season — a first for the club from an ancient city in the deep south of the country. As one might imagine, the local fans of calcio were quite […]

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