Ah, Quique Sanchez Flores. Here we are on Day 2 of My Favorite Soccer Coaches Roundup, which includes a certain Spanish player and coach who grew up wanting to be a sports writer. But more about that in a bit. I have been a fan of Quique Sanchez Flores from the moment he was named […]

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This never was going to be easy but until the Asian Football Confederation draw for the final round of qualifying earlier this week … it didn’t seem quite so daunting. Two groups of six with the top two in each group — following a 10-match home-and-away, round-robin competition — securing a place at Russia 2018. […]

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Is this just me, or does anyone else find a rooting interest in every sporting contest ever invented? Seems a bit odd, now that I think about it, but that’s how it works. And not just with teams I know. Within five minutes of watching a match between teams I do not know … I […]

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This was the mind-boggling score of the weekend. Actually, of the season, so far. Maybe the decade, to date. A team from a hamlet, really, of the northern UAE outback that is Fujairah, scoring four on Al Jazira, the big, proud club smack in the middle of the 1 million people on Abu Dhabi Island. […]

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I need to scold the newspaper headline writer for this one. “Matar man of the moment …” is how it started. And anyone who follows UAE soccer would immediately think of someone other than the man to whom the headline writer was referring. That would be Ismail Matar, the Al Wahda forward universally considered one […]

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It is tempting to say that little Mohammed Khaled is the first kid on his block to have a Bentley, but given the mania for cars in the UAE, that’s an assumption we can’t make. It is fair to suggest he will have the longest wait to get behind the wheel of the new Bentley […]

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Jorge Valdivia is known for being … a bit controversial. Arguments with soccer authorities, rumors about off-the-field issues … But he usually overcomes any of that with his football skills, which are advanced. Al Ain fans still get a bit rapturous when recalling his two-season stay with the team from 2008 to 10. Fans in […]

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The Arabian Gulf League, the UAE’s professional league, over the past year lost two of its more recognizable players — Asamoah Gyan, the Ghana captain and Al Ain forward, who decamped to Shanghai SIPG; and Grafite, the leading scorer for the 2009 Bundesliga champions Wolfsburg and later of Al Ahli, now back in Brazil. Of […]

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This was predictable. A UAE team playing in Tehran against an Iranian team in the quarterfinals of the Asian Champions League … No way it was going to come off as a tribute to sportsmanship. But the reality was even uglier than I had expected, mostly (thankfully) in small, petulant ways — jersey-grabbing, shin-kicking, faking, […]

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I am a fan of the Arabian Gulf League. This is soccer. The top division of the domestic league. It may not be La Liga or the Premier League, but it’s what we have, here in the UAE. It’s indigenous. It’s hometown. And your local club is just down the street from where you live, […]

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