This was the final day in the London 2012 Games for the UAE football team, and my 25th consecutive day writing about them, for The National, from Austria, Manchester, London and Coventry. They didn’t quite cover themselves with glory, but they managed a 1-1 draw against Senegal, and they leave the Summer Games with one […]

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Saw the UAE’s final friendly match tonight, ahead of their going to England for the London 2012 Olympics, and wrote about it for The National. The UAE football team reaching the Olympics … a very big deal. Not that anyone with much experience following soccer likes their chances, especially in a group with Uruguay, Great […]

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This is something you notice during the World Cup, too. Especially if you live where the games are shown at night, and become regular viewing. The First Day with No Games.

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This was so awful I actually felt badly for my English colleagues at The National. Well, not quite. But I was edging in that direction on the emotional spectrum. OK, I’d taken a tentative step … and then I just laughed. I believe even American soccer fans have become aware of the train wreck of […]

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I have watched nearly every minute of England’s Euro 2012 campaign, and after looking at them for 270 minutes, what most impresses me about them is this: They really are not very good.

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That would be me. With the UAE long ago eliminated from contention for the Brazil 2014 World Cup, I have decided my team, here in the sprawling Asian Football Confederation, is Lebanon. I spent all of three days in Beirut for a qualifier last September, and I saw the return match in Abu Dhabi in […]

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I don’t make a habit of watching the final of the FA Cup, the second-biggest domestic prize in English soccer. Most of my life I just wasn’t interested enough, and I probably could not have seen it, anyway. Tonight I watched one for the second time in my life, and the first time since 1991. […]

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The UAE football team that won in Tashkent and clinched a place in the 2012 London Olympics … The president of the country, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, today awarded each player with 500,000 dirhams. Which converts to $136,000. Which is real money for winning a match you already really wanted to win.

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To work in a British-English newsroom, like The National, is to regularly hear expressions unknown in the United States. One of the handier is “minus-one,” used when referring to media activities on the eve of a match. That is, it’s about the match, but “minus-one” day on the calendar. It is when coaches come out […]

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An odd day, and not just because it was Leap Year Day. The UAE swamped Lebanon in a World Cup qualifier, and 10,000 Lebanese fans went home more or less unhappy, even though the UAE defeating Lebanon should be a “dog bites man” event — which is to say, vaguely interesting, depending on the size […]

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