Recorded

It marks one of the most extraordinary developments in UAE sport, a moment that carried Emirati football beyond its borders and to the world. Ten years ago, in May 2011, Diego Maradona was announced as the new manager of Al Wasl, a Dubai-based club fourth in the nascent UAE Pro League.

The previous summer, Maradona had coached Argentina at the World Cup in South Africa, aiming to lead his country to football’s greatest prize, just as he did most famously as a player in 1986. Now he was appointed head coach at Wasl, a decorated club in the UAE top flight but without a trophy in four seasons.

Maradona signed a two-year contract, promising to restore his new employers to former glory. It did not quite work out that way, but Fifa’s joint player of the century would go on to make Dubai his home for the best part of the next decade.

To commemorate that remarkable period, The National has created a podcast series entitled “Diego Maradona: The Dubai Years”, with insight from some of the people who knew best the colourful Argentine during his time here.

In Episode 1, hosts Paul Radley and John McAuley detail the whirlwind moment Maradona was considered as Wasl manager, what it meant for UAE football, his arrival in the Emirates, and that first press conference in which the World Cup winner set the stage for what became a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

Subscribe to this five-part special to hear the story in full.

Produced by Ayesha Khan and Arthur Eddyson.

Sir Nigel Shadbolt, chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, talks about the ethics of AI. 

When plans were revealed for a new European Super League, featuring the biggest football clubs in Europe, initially 12 teams signed up. Six of them were from the English Premier League - Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea. There was to be no relegation for the 15 founder members. Dominic Hart, sports editor at The National, talks to Andy Mittin, The National’s European football correspondent, about the reaction to the announcement and the clubs withdrawing.

Hadal Ahbek, by singer-songwriter Issam Alnajjar, is one of Spotify’s most streamed songs right now. The National's Saeed Saeed talked to the singer, who even caught the ear of the The Weeknd's manager, about his viral hit and how he came up with the song.

Nothing underscores how we do not live in the future as much as the daily commute. If travelling by car, then chances are the vehicle is running on a combustion engine – around since 1886 – that is emitting carbon and hastening climate change. The morning headlines blaring from your speakers are transmitted through radio waves, a form of communication that alerted people on land that the Titanic was sinking back in 1912. Elsewhere, the insult of public transportation is fairly universal. Timely, clean and reliable buses and trams are not the norm, but still the hallmark of a well-managed, well-funded city. And for those lucky enough to catch the breeze in their hair by walking or biking to work, well, those simple pleasures are more timeless than they are ultra-modern. Whichever mode of transport you use, the daily commute today does not look all that different from how our grandparents got to work. The pandemic has changed that, however, all at once but not for all. Now, more attention is being paid to places that make the commute more sustainable, safer and, in some cases, more fun. The National spoke to more than a dozen experts in urban planning, economics, transportation and real estate to understand the changing shape of this global necessity, which has been around since Ancient Greece.

Gaming colleagues Faisal Salah and Michael Coetzee rate the Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X based on how well they did since their release.

On March 2, Dubai resident Sean Burgess set off on an epic journey in his quest to claim a Guinness World Record for crossing all seven emirates of the UAE in as many days on foot, in a bid to support disadvantaged children in Uganda in collaboration with Adidas and Gulf for Good. Burgess shares his rather harrowing experiences, and what he learned from them, with The National. 

The art exhibition is called not in, of, along or relating to a line. Its name suggests the beginning of something vast, beyond the linear and potentially multidimensional. Or maybe the opposite, something lacking a physical dimension altogether. Maya Allison, executive director of NYUAD Art Gallery, and curator and artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, began the task of collating the virtual exhibition. As parts of the world went into lockdown, so did NYUAD Art Gallery. There was no longer a physical space in which to interact with the work.  While the world’s biggest museums and galleries began offering online tours and walkthroughs, NYUAD Art Gallery took a different approach. Its exhibition would not be one in which people could enter the gallery space virtually and tour it in 3D. Instead, it would show works that are “born digital”, made specifically for the online world and tailored for the smartphone screen. Host Alexandra Chavez looks at the ideas culminating in this exhibition. We hear from curator Heather Dewey-Hagborg and artists Maryam Al Hamra and Lee Blalock.

The National’s Ramola Talwar Badam speaks to three scientists who have been granted the golden visa about their research in the UAE and what Emirati citizenship means to them.

When Maya Allison first came to the UAE as the founding executive director of the NYUAD art gallery, she was excited to see what type of art she would find here. Having studied at the prestigious Columbia University School of the Arts in Manhattan, the idea of stories and narratives that existed outside the vast and powerful New York art world always interested her. She discovered a depth of creativity and history in the capital that helped her build a community around the university gallery.