Half-eaten dinners littered the floor of houses sheared in half. Pages from children’s bedtime story books fluttered hauntingly in the wind. On 19 April 2002, amidst the soft lunar landscape of the West…
Tag: middle east
A mix of sun and cloud welcomed the thousands of football fans in the hours leading up to the World Cup final in Moscow. France and Croatia supporters exited the Sportivnaya metro…
“The state of the sport in general, my dear brother, has deteriorated since the 1990s because politics got mixed in with it,” states Mukhtar Mohammed, a sports journalist for Yemen’s Al Ayam. “Everything…
The career of Eamonn O’Keefe in Saudi Arabia is one of the least told but most bizarre stories in football. Welcome to a world of excess, greed, superstardom and a homosexual prince.
While the fallout and anger at Qatar being awarded the World Cup in 2022 continues unabated, this year marks the 27th anniversary of the altogether more romantic story of another Gulf Sheikdom’s epic…
This feature is part of The Academy Way Qatar don’t do things by half. Ever since its first offshore oil field was discovered in 1960, the tiny Gulf state’s stature has simply exploded…
Sometimes, all you have to do is watch a single play to figure out if someone is a real player or not. Other times, it’s even simpler – and all it takes is…
NINE THOUSAND MILES separate the Newcastle Stadium in southeast Australia and the Faisal Al-Husseini arena, Palestine’s home ground in Al-Ram, just outside Jerusalem. The real distance between the serene beaches and mountains of…