Recorded

Ten years ago, Diego Maradona stunned the world as he arrived in the UAE to manage club team Al Wasl. In this series, Paul Radley, sportswriter for The National, and football correspondent John McAuley will be looking back at the time when Maradona mania arrived in the UAE. Subscribe to this five-part special to hear the story in full. Produced by Ayesha Khan and Arthur Eddyson.

In stark contrast to his gilded playing career, Diego Maradona never won a trophy as a manager. His spells in charge of teams were only ever brief, and often ended in turmoil. And yet those who played for him during his time in the UAE remember him with deep affection. They describe a manager full of empathy, warmth, and charisma, who would back them - even when all was lost. In Episode 4 of our p...

Diego Maradona is, for many, the greatest footballer to have ever played the game. So what made him so good? In 1982, when aged 22, he moved from Boca Juniors to Barcelona for a world-record $7.6 million fee. During his two years at Camp Nou, Maradona was a constant thorn in the side of arch-rivals Real Madrid, even helping Barcelona defeat the old enemy in the 1983 Copa del Rey final. He would sp...

Diego Maradona was a magnet for news throughout his career, and his relationship with the media rarely ran smooth. When he came to Dubai a decade ago to manage Al Wasl, the glare of the limelight might have been less harsh than it had been for him in Buenos Aires, Barcelona or Naples. And yet he still managed to find his way into scrapes. From kicking supporters of his own team, wading into the st...

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...

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 Natio...

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 w...

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....

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 creat...

As NYUAD Arts Centre’s 2019-2020 season came to a close, Bill Bragin, its executive art director, and his team began thinking about next season. Coronavirus shut down industries with a brutality that reverberated through the art world. The arts centre was fully aware of the economic impact the pandemic had on artists everywhere. There was the uncertainty about whether there would be in-person perf...

In March 2020, most of the world was waking up to the idea that life would change in ways we couldn’t have imagined. As the pandemic brought much of the planet to a halt, Bill Bragin, executive artistic director of The Arts Centre at NYUAD, had to rethink ways to bring cutting-edge art to the world. How could film screenings and live performance thrive at a time when people were struggling, isolat...

Salem Muqattash, who tested negative for Covid-19 several times between bouts of illness, may have caught the virus twice in 35 days.

Gene Simmons of Kiss talked to Saeed Saeed, music journalist at The National, about what people can expect from their New Year's Eve concert at The Atlantis in Dubai. He also tells us about what he learned during the pandemic and what his relationship with Paul Stanley is like.

Saeed Saeed, music journalist at The National, talks to Paul Stanley of Kiss about the challenges facing the live music industry and how the band’s New Year’s Eve concert in Dubai could set a new standard for producing safe gigs in the future.

Alice Albright, the chief executive of the Global Partnership for Education talks to The National about the GPE calling on the international community to not take children's education for granted. Alice also spoke about the impact that the pandemic has had on education.

Saeed Saeed talks to Gene Simmons of Kiss about their upcoming New Year’s Eve concert in Dubai and why they are taking no chances when it comes to safety and will fly to the emirate on a custom jet.

Haider Hussain, a partner at Fragomen, an immigration services company, spoke to The National for an overview of the rules. 

In this episode of Recorded, we hear from the three artists participating in this year’s Beyond programme – who they are, why they create and the ideas behind their work for Abu Dhabi Art.

Wrestling legend The Undertaker sits down with Evelyn Lau of The National to talk about his 30-year career, his favourite wrestling moments - and unfinished business in the ring.