A few days ago, I watched Tottenham Hotspur’s final match at their ancient stadium at White Hart Lane, where the London club had played its home matches since 1899.

Fans were a bit melancholy but the celebrations before and after the match, won 2-1 by Spurs over Manchester United, seemed to mollify them. Actually, they seemed happy to be in attendance at the final match.

Fans also knew that a new White Hart Lane is going up next to the old Lane, where demolition of the old stadium began the next day.

Which led me to start thinking about some old stadiums I have known, back in the states.

And, in particular, Dodger Stadium.

And how it is time to think seriously about replacing it.

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The most authentic sports experience in the United Arab Emirates is anything pertaining to the domestic soccer league — the Arabian Gulf League.

It is a league overseen by Emiratis, largely staffed by Emiratis, featuring clubs overwhelmingly made up of Emirati footballers, and the whole of the league is largely watched by Emiratis, whether on television or in person.

Any other team sport pursued in the UAE, from cricket to rugby to cycling … it’s a foreign game by and for foreigners and has limited (actually, close-to-zero) Emirati participation or interest. Their three favorite sports are 1) domestic soccer, 2) national-team soccer and 3) international soccer.

So, it was a shock when two government-ordered mergers yesterday wiped out three clubs.

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Tonight is the night.

The night when the ping-pong balls land and it is determined who drafts in the top three of the NBA lottery.

In a matter of minutes the Los Angeles Lakers have a chance to go No. 1 or No. 2 or No. 3 in next month’s talent-heavy NBA draft … or to lose the pick entirely.

They can go from a hard decision between UCLA guard Lonzo Ball and other elite talents … to waiting for the 28th pick, which would be the extent of their draft.

By finishing with the third-worst record in the league, this past season, the Lakers have a 46.9 percent chance of landing one of the top three picks.

If that 46.9 percent top-three result does not come in for them, the Lakers send the pick to the Philadelphia 76ers, the long-term penalty for the ill-fated trade for a broken Steve Nash, back in 2012.

Considering the Lakers are desperate for more help, this is something approaching an all-or-nothing moment.

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Until a few years ago, this is what I knew of Gustav Mahler.

He was a famous composer whose work I had never heard.

He was the favorite composer of the eternally snooty television brothers Frasier and Niles Crane, of the long-running show Frasier.

(Whenever the two went out for a night, odds were it was to a concert including some Mahler.)

On the basis of those two facts, I decided to give Mahler a try, 20 years ago. I bought CDs of two of his symphonies and gave them a listen … and then gave up.

His music seemed a bit impenetrable. Or maybe I did not give him a fair hearing; classical music can sometimes require a couple of times through, before appreciation follows.

Twenty years later, I am giving him another shot … and I must concede that he is pretty good.

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El Jefe Loco, as I liked to call him while writing my countdown-sa2010 blog, back when Diego Maradona was coaching Argentina ahead of the 2010 World Cup, is off the unemployment rolls.

He has been hired to coach a club in the UAE.

The biggest and best? Al Ain or Al Ahli?

Well, no.

One of the other “big” clubs in the nation, like Al Jazira, Al Nasr or Al Wahda?

Guess again.

A chance-to-make-amends return to the UAE club he coached in 2010-11, Al Wasl?

Nope.

Maradona, 56, has been named coach of … tiny Fujairah SC, which not only is bitsy and remote … it is in the second division of UAE soccer.

Yeah. Wow.

El Diego has taken a big, big step down in the world of work.

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A former colleague was driving in Banff, Alberta, looking for a restaurant, when he came to an intersection that spoke to him.

Just as it would to most every Baby Boomer who grew up watching Jay Ward Productions on television.

The colleague sent the photo to several members of his age cohort, and the cracking wise was pretty much inevitable.

Wrote one:

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I spend a lot of time reading soccer stories. As one does, in Europe.

It does not take long to become caught up in European clubs and European leagues, and especially with English football’s Premier League, the most competitive in the world by the accounting of its boosters.

Reading about what happened (or what might happen) also can be fine entertainment, and eventually you begin to discern the better writers from the pedestrian, and gravitate toward them and then even look forward to them.

And the best of them, I believe, is named Barney Ronay, a senior sports writer at The Guardian.

Already this month he …

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This has driven me to distraction for decades, going back to when I was a know-almost-nothing parent coaching my kids’ soccer teams in Highland, California.

I was hazy about numerous concepts of the game, but one I understood quite clearly … and in the decades since have seen screwed up all the time, from kiddie games to the highest levels of professionalism.

The throw-in.

And I am very, very pleased that someone is keeping track of how often throw-ins go wrong, at least in the English Premier League, because the numbers are as astonishing as I expected they would be.

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I follow ice hockey in fits and starts. It is difficult to keep track of the sport on this side of the Atlantic; it’s not like it’s background buzz in generic sports news, over here.

Also, at my last job, “hockey”, without a modifier, was assumed to be field hockey. No. Really. (India used to be really good at it.) In North America, there is hockey and field hockey. In Asia, there is hockey and then there is ice hockey.

So.

Paying attention a little bit, here in France, because I can see snippets of pucks on the cable package we have.

And, to be honest, I really enjoy a particular National Hockey League statistic, the one about how no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1994.

Canada is nuts about hockey; loony about hockey. And it has had to suffer through 21 seasons of American teams winning the Cup. Several of those championships were won by teams located in hockey-blase Sun Belt cities like Tampa and Dallas and Raleigh, N.C., and Anaheim and Los Angeles — twice.

So, a week ago I began checking scores to see which Canadian teams were still alive in the playoffs, and I found Ottawa and Edmonton, and the latter was playing the Anaheim Ducks.

Which actually is my favorite NHL club, if I were to pick one.

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Last week, on the 63rd anniversary of Roger Bannister‘s breakthrough “sub-four-minute mile”, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge ran the fastest marathon in history.

Kipchoge covered 26.2 miles in two hours, 25 seconds, falling 26 seconds short of cracking the increasingly less awe-inspiring “two-hour barrier”.

The Rio 2016 Olympic gold-medalist’s run came as part of a Nike-sponsored effort to sell more shoes through the attention lavished on its Breaking2 campaign.

(Adidas apparently is working on this, too.)

The time will not stand as a world record, however — Dennis Kimetto’s mark of 2:02:57, set at Berlin in 2014, still stands — for several good reasons.

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