This was the big story today, and The National was all over it. Diego Maradona, “El Jefe Loco,” as I preferred to refer to him while I was writing the countdown to South Africa blog, has signed a two-year deal to coach the UAE Pro League club Al Wasl, starting with the 2011/12 season. First, […]

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One of the most interesting sports personalities in the history of the Inland Empire, football coach Don Markham, has found another job: At Compton High School, in the Moore League. My former colleague John Murphy alerted me to this. John is the source of a large fraction of all high school news that comes out […]

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The FIFA Club World Cup dropped by Abu Dhabi the past two Decembers. Kind of an odd tournament because it has a couple of famous clubs and then five not all that well known. And not all that many matches, either. So in some ways, the UAE having its bid accepted for the FIFA 2013 […]

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Many of us in North America, in particular, have no expertise in various major sports competitions in other parts of the world. But we have a vague idea of them. The Copa Libertadores is big in South America. The UEFA Champions League is huge in Europe. So is the Euro Cup. The specifics may be […]

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I am still on the Los Angeles Galaxy’s media list, so I get this stuff sent to me, and this item came a week ago, and I have intended to mention it ever since. It’s about a 16-year-old forward the Galaxy has signed. And this most certainly is premature, but could this Jack McBean kid […]

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Seems a long time back, already, but it was just two weeks ago in Doha that my colleague at The National, Chuck Culpepper, and I were talking about revolutions, and we agreed that the “default setting” for most people who grew up in democracies is to side with the revolutionaries against autocrats. Even if we […]

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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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Two consecutive days of it on this blog. Let’s go for three. For the Tuesday a.m. newspaper I did a column about the 1993 Asian World Cup qualifying tournament, which was held in Doha. An event I actually covered. (Gannett News Service; the good old days; stuff like that happened.) It was wild, six countries, […]

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I love the World Cup. But I’ve covered it. Four of them, actually,  from Italy 1990 through Japan/Korea of 2002. Grand event. But if we think in terms of “doing something I haven’t done before”, these are the two soccer events I would like to see, in person: 1. The Africa Cup of Nations. 2. […]

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Funny. I’ve been exposed to so much soccer in the past three years, I might actually go to Galaxy games as a fan, now. Though I would rather get paid to cover them, of course. Anyway, the club recently has been making news pretty much all over the spectrum involving some names well-known in the […]

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