When you cover an event, as a journalist, your point of reference is the team you are following. Even in defeat. Well, of course. The default intellectual setting for fans as well as writers is not “their team won, and why” … it is “our team lost, and how come?” When the UAE lost 3-1 […]

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David Trezeguet. You may have heard of him. Played for France’s World Cup champions in 1998. Spent a decade at Juventus and scored 138 goals. Also got the golden goal (remember the short history of that arrangement?) in the 2000 European championships, winning it 2-1 for France over Italy. Well, Trezeguet is 34 now, and […]

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It must be strange to be a citizen — an Emirati — in the UAE. Foreigners outnumber you almost 7-to-1 in your own country. The latest population statistics indicate that only about 1 million of the 8 million people here are citizens. Thus, being able to gather with your own for important events must be […]

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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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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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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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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