By some fluke of typically random Al Jazeera programming, I stumbled across a re-run of last night’s Galaxy at Tijuana game in the Concacaf Champions League … And I was shocked … stunned … at the lack of energy in the match. Certainly, in the first half of a 90 minutes won 4-2 by the […]

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Not sure I’ve ever given an idea of what it is like for a sports writer to cover a soccer game, here in the UAE. Some of it will seem familiar to American journos. But some of it is not at all similar to your experience in a U.S. press box — from being served […]

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“Sack” is a particularly British word. Used little, if at all, in North America, outside the circles of the New World’s Premier League acolytes. It means “to fire”. To dismiss. To give the boot. To make redundant. (Oops; another Britishism.) I’m not sure either league is aware of it, but I sense an international soccer […]

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Perhaps this represents some sort of breakthrough. Maybe I have now seen enough soccer that I know a bad game when I see one. Nah. Ten years ago I would have known this was a bad game. Twenty. Al Jazira 4, Al Wahda 3, in the Capital Derby, and an abominable performance by two Abu […]

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The UAE has soccer “derbies”, in the English sense — rivalries between neighbors. Al Wahda and Al Jazira, for instance, located only a couple of miles apart, here in Abu Dhabi. Sharjah’s two teams, Al Shaab and Sharjah, have a strong rivalry, too. But the country does not really have rivalries involving teams from different […]

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November is deep into Fall, in most of the northern hemisphere. Though it is a bit hard to tell, here in the UAE, where really only two seasons exist. Summer, and Not Summer. The first runs from May through October, though often it begins more in April and extends into November. Not Summer is the […]

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Jorge Fossati has been around. He began coaching soccer teams in 1993, and been employed pretty much nonstop, in a very volatile field, including time in his native Uruguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. When he was hired by Al Ain, that made five countries he had coached in, three here in the Gulf. And […]

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A couple of requirements, seemingly, for the Western soccer player — meaning Europe and the western hemisphere. 1. A silly haircut. 2. A batch of tattoos. We have the silly hair, here in the Gulf. We do not have sleeves (or torsos) of tattoos — aside from those adorning/marring the foreign imports. Which I find […]

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The UAE leans toward traditions and styles preferred by some of the elite European leagues, so the local Super Cup is rather like those of several other countries. The defending league champion plays the defending cup champion (in this case, the President’s Cup; in England, the FA Cup) in a match that kicks off the […]

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Last week, a letter arrived at the offices of Al Ain club, here in the UAE. It contained an invitation, extended by the English Premier League club Arsenal, to Omar Abdulrahman, by consensus the best soccer player in the country, to join the London club for a one-week trial. Not long ago — maybe even […]

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