Only one sport really matters among the citizens of the United Arab Emirates. And, actually, it is a subset of one sport. The men’s national soccer team. Not necessarily the domestic soccer league those guys play in; Emirati fans are far more interested in club soccer in other countries, particularly in England and Spain. No, […]

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Rio 2016 is the first Summer Olympics I will not attend since Moscow 1980. Yes, it was a good run. I made it to eight consecutive Summer Games. Beginning with Los Angeles 1984 and continuing with Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The first four with […]

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It is a great job: Recording the highs and lows of a Volvo Ocean Race sailing team during a nine-month circumnavigation of the planet. It is a horrific job: During the 40,000 or so nautical miles of the journey, the onboard VOR reporter will encounter heaving seas, deep cold, blistering heat and the spartan living […]

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This falls under the heading of a particularly broad category of human events. To wit: What were they thinking?!? Someone at a BMW dealership and someone at Al Ain FC, the most celebrated soccer club in the UAE, thought it would be a good idea to do a commercial spot. So far so good. However, […]

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Ah, Quique Sanchez Flores. Here we are on Day 2 of My Favorite Soccer Coaches Roundup, which includes a certain Spanish player and coach who grew up wanting to be a sports writer. But more about that in a bit. I have been a fan of Quique Sanchez Flores from the moment he was named […]

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Some stories I have read in the past few days, stories you also might like. Let’s start with this one: In late 2001, Major League Soccer was essentially dead for several hours, after only six seasons and lots of red ink. Who saved it? The story suggests Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs […]

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Manny Pacquiao says his third go-round with Timothy Bradley, at the MGM Grand tomorrow night, will be his last fight. It pretty much is time for the Filipino fighter, 37, to go, though a re-run of a re-run with a middling opponent is not exactly a Fight of the Century Part Dieu exit from the […]

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In the suite of British sports, Formula One auto racing is something like the No. 4 competition. Behind soccer, cricket and rugby … but not much else. They don’t seem to mind that the sport is shockingly dull and depressingly predictable, featuring entire races in which the pole-sitter is never headed. One team tends to […]

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Leave it to Lionel Messi to do something that will have soccer fans buzzing for a day or three. In this case, it was a semi-controversial move: A penalty kick that he did not aim at goal, instead knocking it sideways to Barcelona teammate Luis Suarez, who subsequently scored. Some were amazed and giddy at […]

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I must first have noticed the city of Sete on the map, where the Languedoc region of southern France creeps down to the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Sete is near the southern end of a confused stretch of French coastline, where land gives way to water and back again from west of Marseille almost […]

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