It was a preposterous bit of “news” in the offices of The National newspaper, based in the United Arab Emirates. Diego Maradona had signed a two-season contract to coach the Dubai club Al Wasl FC of the UAE Pro League. (Sure, and Pele was going to come with him as an assistant.) However, as that […]
Entries Tagged as 'The National'
A Year Following Diego Maradona
November 27th, 2020 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Football, Maradona, Pro League, soccer, Sports Journalism, The National, UAE
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Liverpool, Barcelona and the Need for Physique As Well As Technique
May 8th, 2019 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Champions League, English Premier League, Football, soccer, Sports Journalism, The National, UAE
I have some history with Jonathan Wilson, going back to when I was in Abu Dhabi working for The National, the emirate’s English-language newspaper. Wilson was one of our European soccer correspondents, contributing a couple of pieces per week. He often took on topics focusing on what he perceived to be significant trends in the […]
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England’s Idle Dream of Displacing Qatar in 2022
August 2nd, 2018 · No Comments · Football, Russia 2018, soccer, The National, UAE, World Cup
How many times has global soccer gone through this over the past 30 years? Three times? Four? England, standing prepared to stage, on short notice, what appears to be a possibly amateurish — or scandal-tainted — World Cup. Most recently, it was Russia 2018. This time it is Qatar 2022, the World Cup that has […]
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Ten Years of Blogging at Oberjuerge.com
March 10th, 2018 · 5 Comments · Abu Dhabi, Beijing Olympics, France, Hong Kong, Journalism, LANG, Newspapers, Olympics, Paris, Sports Journalism, The National, The Sun, UAE
This blog commenced on March 10, 2008. Ten years ago today. It was four days after I had been fired by the Los Angeles News Group, and I wanted to let co-workers and other journalists know what had happened, with as many specifics as I could recall pertaining to the (then mostly novel) concept of […]
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Chasing Bad Air Around the World
February 17th, 2018 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, The National, The Sun
This dawned on me the other day. Even before we made the drive up (and back) through California’s Central Valley. I have spent nearly the whole of my life breathing bad air. Polluted air. Sometimes thick enough to taste. Sometimes particulates so tiny they never come back out a person’s lungs. Didn’t plan it that […]
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Botox Cheating in Camel Beauty Contests?
January 23rd, 2018 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Journalism, The National, UAE
So says the camel expert at The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, where we worked and lived for more than six years. Anna Zacharias, a journalist from Canada who has made the Arabian Peninsula her home, has her ear to the ground concerning the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, near Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. […]
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Abu Dhabi’s ‘World Tennis Championship’ and Waiting to See Who Turns Up
December 22nd, 2017 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Tennis, The National
It was Abu Dhabi’s idea, and not a bad one. Take the tennis-free final weekend of the year and jam into it a three-day, six-player competition grandiosely titled “World Tennis Championship”. Target the highest-ranked players in the world by offering fat appearance fees for a few days of action in the Gulf sun, with another […]
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Srecko Katanec: A Big Deal in Slovenia
October 8th, 2017 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Football, soccer, Sports Journalism, The National, UAE, World Cup
As the ultimate international sport, one might expect soccer would offer all sorts of odd and interesting connections. This guy played for that guy, and later became coach of this team that I covered … It really is rather amazing, in a sort of “three degrees of separation” way. And I have noticed a few […]
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Head Trauma? Rugby, Motor Racing Step on Up!
August 17th, 2017 · No Comments · Abu Dhabi, Baseball, Cricket, Football, Motor racing, Rugby, The National
A couple of posts on this blog suggest the National Football League will not exist as we know it — if it exists at all — 20-30 years from now. By then, all the horrors of football-related brain trauma will have been clearly laid out and, barring some unexpected breakthrough in protective equipment, the lawsuits […]
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The Final Day at a Newsroom I Knew
June 30th, 2017 · No Comments · Journalism, The National
Of all the melancholy aspects of newspapers shrinking, or failing, or shutting down, it is the abandonment of a newsroom that makes me most wistful. Today is the final day in the original home of The National, the first English-language newspaper in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. We spent six years there […]
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