My father and I rarely saw eye to eye when I was growing up. We saw the world differently. It was only when we were both adults that we were able to share spectacles. However, football, and particularly the World Cup, was when we, enemy combatants, could traverse trenches and be together.

A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona.

The Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990, spanned four World Cups. It would have been a more symmetrical five had the Lebanese begun in 1974, but you know, we're Mediterranean, and timing isn't our forte.

When the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975, I was 15. I was shipped to boarding school in England and, after that, to UCLA.

One of the first lessons I learned in football is that it takes a team to win a game.

It's not every day you are able to sign a top-10 athlete, let alone two in the same week.

I probably should have gotten out, but I really enjoyed the challenge of bringing a team to that game. In fact, I probably enjoy the challenge of it more than the actual game.

Really the team often will take on the personality of its coach.