ABU DHABI // The young players sported football strips of all colours, each shirt embroidered with the crest of their local high-school. The green kits belonging to the American Community School (ACS) of Abu Dhabi displayed surnames on their backs.
The "soccer moms" sat proudly on the sidelines of Cramer Field, while the dads, having stood screaming during play, threw their arms around their children on the final whistle.
Congratulations and commiseration arrived in equal measure.
"It's very much an American system," said Kevin Brawn, the head of athletics at ACS and one of the organisers of last weekend's junior varsity Middle East and South Asia Conference football championships. "We try to make it special for the children and they then get excited about it."
The competition included four schools - two from Abu Dhabi, one from Dubai and one from Doha. A school from Cairo withdrew when Egypt started to experience political unrest.
Each game was preceded by the players' names being read out to cheers over the public address system. During the match, the action was often drowned out by friends and fans singing songs from the bleachers.
The United States is undoubtedly the benchmark when it comes to varsity sports, with highly-popular high school programmes. At the college level, games regularly selling out at stadiums of 70,000 seats or more.
Here, schools experience the best of both worlds, Brawn said - American enthusiasm mixed with international interest.
"All the schools have quite a few South American children, so we end up with a mixture of them, Canadian, American, South African and Middle Eastern," Brawn said. "That's unique to the soccer here because while we have North American sports and European sports, soccer is very much international."
Last weekend's tournament involved eight teams - four boys' and four girls' teams - and saw 34 different nationalities represented, including countries as far apart as El Salvador and South Korea. Of the 120 children, three cited the UAE as their home country.
"We don't have a lot of Emiratis in our high school," Brawn said. "I would say the percentage of kids we have on our soccer team is indicative of the percentage of Emiratis in our high school."
Ahmed al Sayegh, an Emirati father watching his daughter Alyazia from a seat near the touchline, said he believed sport to be "just as important as the academic side of things".
"It is an American school, so there is always going to be internationals here, it is to be expected," he said. "There are many dangers in society and, as a teenager, the camaraderie they are subject to through sport helps then negotiate these issues. When we chose ACS, it was mainly for the quality of education offered, but also the best school academically tends to have a variety of extra-curricular activities too."
ACS will host a basketball championships in two weeks and its students will compete in a tennis event in Dubai later this month. With Cairo American Community School being forced to withdraw from hosting the cross-country championships because of the trouble in the Egyptian capital, ACS has offered to host the first day of the competition at Yas Marina Circuit, and second day's action at Hatta Fort.
As the referee blew the final whistle at the tournament last weekend, an ACS coach - red in the face from screaming instructions - provided one final order: go shake hands with your opponent. Not that the young boys needed telling: most of them, clad in their green shirts with their names on the back, were already on their way.
gmeenaghan@thenational.ae
Company Profile:
Name: The Protein Bakeshop
Date of start: 2013
Founders: Rashi Chowdhary and Saad Umerani
Based: Dubai
Size, number of employees: 12
Funding/investors: $400,000 (2018)
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The five pillars of Islam
Zayed Sustainability Prize
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
CREW
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WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
PROFILE OF INVYGO
Started: 2018
Founders: Eslam Hussein and Pulkit Ganjoo
Based: Dubai
Sector: Transport
Size: 9 employees
Investment: $1,275,000
Investors: Class 5 Global, Equitrust, Gulf Islamic Investments, Kairos K50 and William Zeqiri
Coming soon
Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura
When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Akira Back Dubai
Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.
BIG SPENDERS
Premier League clubs spent £230 million (Dh1.15 billion) on January transfers, the second-highest total for the mid-season window, the Sports Business Group at Deloitte said in a report.
JOKE'S%20ON%20YOU
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COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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Engine: four-litre V6 and 3.5-litre V6 twin-turbo
Transmission: six-speed and 10-speed
Power: 271 and 409 horsepower
Torque: 385 and 650Nm
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How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
New schools in Dubai
How to apply for a drone permit
- Individuals must register on UAE Drone app or website using their UAE Pass
- Add all their personal details, including name, nationality, passport number, Emiratis ID, email and phone number
- Upload the training certificate from a centre accredited by the GCAA
- Submit their request
What are the regulations?
- Fly it within visual line of sight
- Never over populated areas
- Ensure maximum flying height of 400 feet (122 metres) above ground level is not crossed
- Users must avoid flying over restricted areas listed on the UAE Drone app
- Only fly the drone during the day, and never at night
- Should have a live feed of the drone flight
- Drones must weigh 5 kg or less
Racecard
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Company name: baraka
Started: July 2020
Founders: Feras Jalbout and Kunal Taneja
Based: Dubai and Bahrain
Sector: FinTech
Initial investment: $150,000
Current staff: 12
Stage: Pre-seed capital raising of $1 million
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Name: Fareed Lafta
Age: 40
From: Baghdad, Iraq
Mission: Promote world peace
Favourite poet: Al Mutanabbi
Role models: His parents
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Goalkeepers: Ali Khaseif, Fahad Al Dhanhani, Mohammed Al Shamsi, Adel Al Hosani
Defenders: Bandar Al Ahbabi, Shaheen Abdulrahman, Walid Abbas, Mahmoud Khamis, Mohammed Barghash, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Hassan Al Mahrami, Yousef Jaber, Mohammed Al Attas
Midfielders: Ali Salmeen, Abdullah Ramadan, Abdullah Al Naqbi, Majed Hassan, Abdullah Hamad, Khalfan Mubarak, Khalil Al Hammadi, Tahnoun Al Zaabi, Harib Abdallah, Mohammed Jumah
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
The five pillars of Islam
