Bhutan is a small, rarely visited country on the eastern end of the Himalayas. North of India, south of Tibet, middle of nowhere. And it probably is neither unkind nor unfair to suggest that a couple of weeks ago, Bhutan was best known, globally, for being the country ranked 209th — and last — in […]

[Read more →]

The UAE won the right to stage the 2019 Asian Cup on Monday … a tournament not well known in the rest of the world but a very big deal in Asia. Almost as big a deal to Asia as the African Cup of Nations is to Africa. Way bigger than North America’s generally limp […]

[Read more →]

Omar Abdulrahman is the best soccer player in the UAE. He might be the best soccer player in the Middle East. He is good enough that whenever foreigners see him play, they inevitably ask: “When are you going to Europe?” Now and then, Omar has seemed vaguely interested in that concept. He trained for a […]

[Read more →]

The list of sports events I would like to cover once before I die … is no longer a long one. I have been very lucky. Not to say I haven’t missed some big events. But most of them I am not all that interested in seeing, as a journalist. The British Open. The U.S. […]

[Read more →]

A reader sent along this paragraph from a blogger who goes by Left Coast Sports Babe. “Big sports news across the pond in England. BBC calling it maybe the biggest FA Cup shocker ever – Bradford City comes back from 2-0 down to beat Chelsea 4-2. And in the U.S. people are going, “who’s Bradford, […]

[Read more →]

Two ways generic soccer fans would know Diego Forlan. 1. He’s the Uruguayan forward who isn’t Luis Suarez. Forlan is the friendly one — the one who doesn’t bite. 2. Forlan seems to be considered one of the handsomest soccer players in the world. He also won the Golden Ball (best player) at the 2010 […]

[Read more →]

We work in a region of the world where, in several countries, the basics in life are anything but a certainty. For example … the domestic soccer league. Is it playing, in Syria? Is it safe to attend, in Iraq? Could riots break out, in Egypt? Americans have complaints about their lives, but compared to […]

[Read more →]

If this is sports, and we are talking about the UAE’s biggest victory, we can be talking only about soccer. And this was a big victory, indeed. UAE a 5-4 winner in a quarterfinal shootout over defending continental champion Japan in the 2015 Asian Cup in Australia. If you are a team in Asia, the […]

[Read more →]

The U.S. Soccer Federation today announced Bruce Arena, the LA Galaxy coach and former U.S. national team coach, as winner of the annual Werner Fricker Award — given to “an individual who has worked tirelessly on furthering the interest of the sport of soccer without regard to personal recognition or advancement”. I am not quite […]

[Read more →]

First, the irony. World soccer governing body Fifa won’t tell you how its two-dozen executive committee members voted after they hand out the World Cup … But Fifa gives us chapter and verse on how the voting goes for the Ballon d’Or, the player-of-the-year award. Which Cristiano Ronaldo won tonight, as he should have, for […]

[Read more →]