This probably was a global trend, but it was certainly got a boost from the Barcelona club and the Spain national team.
To wit: Soccer is increasingly the province of tiny men with high technical skills who can run forever. Big is out. Muscles? Not really necessary, aside from those needed to move your almost frighteningly […]

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This was a first: A Briton asking me to write a story about Landon Donovan.
The news peg is that Landon is back in England, for two months, on loan with the Premier League side Everton, and he seems likely to play his first match (in his second Everton go-round) Wednesday night.
Here is that piece, which […]

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The world of professional football (international variety) seems enormous.
Countries you couldn’t find on a map have professional leagues. Countries you’ve never heard of have leagues. Countries like England and Germany have about 28 tiers of leagues.
I’ve been writing from the UAE for more than two years and, admit it, most of you have no clear […]

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This surprised me a bit. Landon Donovan going back to Everton, the English Premier League side in Liverpool, on a two-month loan spanning January and February, during the Major League Soccer offseason.
Why should this have puzzled me? For at least two reasons.

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The UAE is having a hard time in soccer/football. Which wouldn’t be as big an issue if the game weren’t the national sport.
The senior team is suffering through its most difficult and disappointing World Cup qualifying, with five defeats in five matches, and was eliminated before the final round of Brazil 2014 qualifying. The kind […]

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My recollection is this: I called Landon Donovan the day before the 2001 MLS Cup final and talked to him for 10 or 15 minutes. Yes. The day before. Called him on his cell, and he picked up, and I wrote a story based on what we talked about on the eve of the game.
Those […]

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If ever you feel despair about the future of American national soccer, wondering if any of us will live to see the Yanks win the World Cup … or get to the final … or semifinal … well, things could be far worse. You could be in China, wondering when your nation of 1.3 billion […]

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You think your national soccer team has problems?
(Well, if your team is China, it does.)
The UAE fell out of contention for the 2014 World Cup today, November 11, 2011 — three-and-a-half years ahead of the 2014 World Cup. Done. Out of it. Can’t survive the second-to-last round of Asia Confederation qualifying.
That’s right. UAE fans of […]

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Each fall, an organization known as Futbol de Primera polls journalists to determine the best U.S. national team player of that calendar year. (For years, they gave away a Honda automobile to the winner; that no longer appears to be the case.)
The Futbol de Primera (formerly Honda) award is better than the U.S. Soccer Federation […]

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Well, this is a bit awkward. The UAE women’s national team tonight won their second West Asian Football Federation championship, following up on the title they won at the last WAFF tournament, in early 2010.
What we have here is something Americans could recognize: Compared to their rivals, the women’s national soccer team appears to be […]

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