The opening match in the Asian Cup was tonight. Qatar, the host nation, played Uzbekistan. And as I watched Qatar play — and, mind, they’re not very good — I was favorably impressed by about four guys. Two of them were born in South America and another was born in Africa. Which brings us to […]

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Landon Donovan is the 2010 U.S. National Team Player of the Year. At least according to the Futbol de Primera organization, which annually canvasses 200-plus journalists, including me, who vote for their top three players on the national team during the previous year. So of course Landon won it. He deserved it. Those two goals […]

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I believe many of us like to think we’re glass-half-empty people. Doesn’t a sort of world-weariness make us seem, oh, more sophisticated? More realistic? Cock-eyed optimism … doesn’t the “cock-eyed” tell us all we need to know about optimists? Certainly, in the news biz, where we document famine and pestilence and death and destruction, optimists […]

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Guy McCarthy, a friend and former co-worker, sent me a Christmas greeting in which he veered off to a topic that fascinates both of us: The U.S. national soccer team. Well, and he also poked fun at the English for getting all excited about their “easy” World Cup 2010 draw in a group with the […]

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I’ve written it a hundred times. I’ve known Landon Donovan since he was 16. I’ve been writing about him since then. I’ve been in his family home in Redlands and in his first home in Manhattan Beach … and, well, he was the rare major athlete I had anything resembling a quasi-friendly relationship with. I’ve […]

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Just noticed this story on The National website, here in Abu Dhabi. I’m not even sure it made the print edition of the paper. After TP Mazembe of the Congo lost in the Club World Cup championships game, according to the Agence France-Presse story, some fans rioted in Lubumbashi, the hometown of the Mazembe club as […]

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The circus has pulled up stakes and is leaving town. But it sure was fun to have Blatter Bros. Barnum & Bailey in town for consecutive Decembers. It’s not as if we here in the Gulf get to see elite teams playing hard. They might drop by for a winter-training-camp friendly (like AC Milan will […]

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I can’t help myself. I’m starting to like the guy. Yeah, he might have compromised himself a time or 10 along the way, but the guy has almost a messianic vision for his game, and he is making things happen. They may seem strange to the First World soccer nations, giving the 2018 World Cup […]

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Received an e-mail from the Los Angeles Galaxy today about roster moves the club has made. “LA Galaxy Acquire the Rights to Juan Pablo Angel and Frankie Hejduk” I know Juan Pablo Angel, a goalscoring machine, is supposed to be the big news here. Which is why he was listed first. But what I am […]

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Somehow, the gulf in the soccer world between Europe, South America … and everyone else … seems more pronounced in the Club World Cup than the regular World Cup. I know why. In the World Cup, even though you know that the odds are about 99.99 percent than a team from Europe or South America […]

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