If you think American sports franchises are quick on the trigger, when it comes to firing coaches … you have not been paying attention to sports clubs overseas. The owner of the Chelsea soccer club fires a world-famous coach about once every six months. Once you get past Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and David Moyes, […]

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Basically, this could not happen. The best football club in the UAE, probably one of the best in all of Asia, at home, against the worst club in the Pro League, a team playing in the top flight for the first time in its obscure history, and based in a small town in the near-empty […]

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This is not a country that stints on awards and rewards. And now, merely for attending an Al Jazira soccer match, and showing some basic ability at kicking a ball, someone will win a Ferrari Italia 458 … and someone else will win a million dirhams — or $272,000. In cash. Jazira is one of […]

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The latest news of match fixing in soccer washed around the globe today, and it was the usual depressing stuff about this game and that game and about 680 other games played from 2008 through 2011 that were deemed “suspicious” by the authorities and may have been fixed, by gamblers. And then there was the […]

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David Beckham signed with Paris Saint-Germain today, and in my humble opinion he missed an opportunity to end his career with a dramatic and daring flourish. Signing with PSG is consistent with Beckham’s peregrinations since leaving Manchester United in 2003 — big clubs in world cities. He could have done it in a far more […]

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I admire a well-run sports team as much as the next guy, and probably more so, since I have spent nearly the whole of my adult life covering sports teams. The Green Bay Packers, once upon a time. The New York Yankees from about 1920 to 1964. Yes, even the Boston Celtics, back when they […]

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What does a newspaper do when it has a big story on Day 1? It looks for ways to carry forward the narrative on Day 2. While your competitors are scrambling to catch up, or trying to knock down your story, you push it even further along. So, for this morning’s newspaper, we had David […]

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In journalism, some days just turn weird. You think you know how things will go. It seems slow. Routine. Boring. At the 4 p.m. news meeting I all but said “sorry, folks, sports is dull today …” And four hours later I was in a cab in the posh northwest corner of Abu Dhabi island, […]

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Some crazy weather here. The high temperature in Abu Dhabi today was 77 Fahrenheit, making it the lowest daily high since April. A real bundle-up day. But here is the shocker. Rain. Quite a bit of it. The most in a day since 2006, some people said.

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Why not? Those were the words from Kefah Al Kaabi, a TV and radio soccer pundit here in the UAE. The question was:

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