A few hours ago, I watched the entirety of the Opening Ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympics. I was more than a bit surprised to last the 3 hours and 50 minutes, running till 12:46 a.m., here in England, considering I was alternately bored and puzzled. It must have been the caffeine in the diet […]

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  I was impressed by: –Ismail Matar. The grand old man of UAE national football, all of 29, scored a goal of surpassing guile. He beat the offside trap, took a fine through-pass from the back, went in on the keeper alone, juked him to the ground, side-stepped him (above; a frame grab from The […]

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The city of Manchester bid for the 2000 Olympics, which was a bit crazy, given that Sydney and Beijing also were in the running. Sydney won the bid, and put on a great 2000 Games — still the best Summer Olympics I have seen. And I’ve seen them all since 1984. Beijing finished second in […]

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  What a great discovery. Austria. Who knew? That is a final picture of the Grandhotel Lienz, taken from the other side of the Isel River. Quite a spot. The hotel, the river, the city. But I liked just about all of what I saw in this country.

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About halfway through Wimbledon, a Yank who sits near me in the offices of The National, a guy who is not a tennis fan, asked: “Why do the women play only best of three?” That is a very good question. Yes. Why. In an era where women run the same distances as men do, and […]

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Athletes need to give some thought to how they celebrate. Things are getting out of control.Winners are losing all sense of decorum, all sense of style and proportionality. So, a list of things I will not do when I win a big event:

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I’ve seen a lot of soccer, over the past 25 years. From AYSO to the World Cup. Hundreds of matches. Maybe a thousand. But I still do not know this game in the way that someone who grew up playing and watching it does. I don’t know soccer like I do baseball, basketball, (American) football, […]

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The level of soccer in the UAE is often denigrated by the sport’s local cognoscenti.Both foreign and domestic. They seem to believe it should compare to top European leagues, which is unrealistic given that each team is limited to four expatriates, and the rest of the squad comes from an Emirati male population of about […]

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When you’re on the high side of the big five-oh, you get a little more stingy with the “I’ll never forget that!” declarations. At this age, you have a pretty good notion you’ve long since forgotten an awful lot of “unforgettable” stuff. But this setting, this game, this result … was so exotic, so unexpected […]

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To work in a British-English newsroom, like The National, is to regularly hear expressions unknown in the United States. One of the handier is “minus-one,” used when referring to media activities on the eve of a match. That is, it’s about the match, but “minus-one” day on the calendar. It is when coaches come out […]

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