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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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As fans of the U.S. national team, we have skewed perceptions of what qualifies as hard times. As a fan of the UAE national team, I can vouch for that. For the Americans, World Cup qualifying losses to Mexico and Costa Rica, two of the top sides in the western hemisphere, ranks as a panic […]

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I follow two national soccer teams, the United States and the UAE. Both play twice in the coming week in crucial 2018 World Cup qualifiers. I don’t feel good about either national team’s chances. For reasons that apply to both — key injuries, the pressure to produce results and competent opponents. First, the U.S.

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One of the worst teams in Major League Soccer has signed German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger. Five years ago, this would have been an enormous coup for the Chicago Fire, which has not won a playoffs match since 2009. But the Schweinsteiger the MLS club signed is 32, with skills fading in real time, who appeared […]

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In the States, this would be considered odd. Crowds at major sports events … breaking into song during a game. Singing happens, now and then, at U.S. stadiums. But it usually is scheduled and involves two songs — the national anthem and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. In England and Wales and Scotland […]

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Isn’t it grand when someone writes a piece taking a position you wholeheartedly endorse? Especially when you begin to wonder if you are the only one who feels that way? That is what happened today when a staffer at The Guardian, a British daily newspaper, published a commentary pointing out the “dark arts” (that is, […]

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Well, yes, it appears Landon Donovan’s soccer playing career has ended without a formal declaration, which we suggested last month when a deal to play for Real Salt Lake fell through. Donovan now seems interested in the business side of the game, which would mark an obvious, prominent and perhaps lucrative move for him as […]

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