Wow. That looked miserable. Actually, it looked scary.

Professional soccer,  and all that running and sprinting and just maximum exertion … in temperatures described by weather.com as “93, feels like 113.”

That was what we had going on here in Abu Dhabi tonight when Al Jazira played Al Nasr on Day 2 of the local soccer season, just down the street from The National.

I’m fairly amazed that the players performed as well as they did, given the extreme conditions.

How bad was it?

Abel Braga of Jazira was a soaked, dripping mess within the first 20 minutes of the match.

Abel Braga is Jazira’s coach.

The players were veritable fountains of sweat as they dashed, then jogged, then carefully picked their moments to exert as the match went on.

The single scariest moment? When Jazira’s right back, Yasir Mater, was standing near the center line, late first half, not doing much of anything, no one around him … and he sat down semi-awkwardly … then laid back on the grass, stretched out and panting.

It took a moment (I could see it on the replay) for anyone to notice. He had not been involved in a collision. The game was going on at another part of the field, and finally everyone noticed this guy sprawled on the grass and kicked the ball out of bounds.

The medical guys came running out for about the 10th time of what would be some 20-plus trips, and they bent over him and we couldn’t see his face. All we could see was his chest heaving as he sucked in air. And, frankly, I was thinking “this may be very bad.” I was in the press tribune at the Confederations Cup in Lyon, France, on a very warm day in 2003 when Marc-Vivien Foe,  a midfielder for Cameroon, collapsed in the center circle, with no one around him, and died from heart failure. It reminded me of that.

The medical people didn’t seem quite as frantic as I recall them being with Foe, so when they took him off … well, it was still creepy but not as creepy. And, in fact, Matar played in the second half.

Backing up for a second. It was 93 Fahrenheit (about 35 Celsius) but “felt like” 113 (about 45 Celsius) because it was grotesquely humid, as it so often is here, at night, in semi-late summer. To walk outside was to feel the weight of water on your skin, and to find yourself breathing something that didn’t quite seem like air. Maybe a mixture of water and air. I wonder if fish could survive in that air for quite some time.

And these guys were playing professional soccer in that.

Early in the match, I decided it was a choppy and uneven affair. Lots of clumsy tackles, quite a bit of theatric diving, lots and lots of stoppages in play … and it finally struck me:

These guys were going down to stop the match, not to try to cadge a foul or a card as we normally would expect. To take a little break. To give everyone else on the pitch a break. Because while they were down clutching a phantom knee injury, almost all of the other 21 guys on the field were over on the touchline, drinking quantities of liquids or pouring water over their heads in a hopeless attempt to cool off.

Maybe it’s part of the Unspoken Players Code. When playing in the UAE, when sent out by the league to compete in “feels like 113” conditions … we all take turns falling down. Understood? We all do. Because otherwise we may not make it to the other end. Literally.

It struck me that nearly everyone was complicit. The referee actually did try to wave guys back to their feet, with little success. But he never carded anyone for stalling or diving. And at the end of the first half, when he easily could have added six (heck, 10) minutes of injury time, he added two minutes.

Perhaps only the coaches, both of them Brazilians, were driving the players on. Well, their jobs are at stake, so sure.

The players did actually run hard when they had the ball or when they were marking the man with the ball. But the rest of the guys … were doing a lot of walking. And I can assure you that even walking in those conditions can be sweaty, exhausting work.

Other little things the players did …

–Long interludes elapsed in which one team held the ball for maybe a dozen passes. Just knocking it around inside the attacking end. Over here. Over there. While most everyone watched. Because it takes effort to win the ball, and everyone had to be exhausted within 20 minutes of kickoff in each half.

And to lose possession — or win it — meant 20 guys having to shift 50, 60, 70 yards to the other end of the field. No one was keen to do that. So why exhaust yourself in a game of takeaway?

–Lots of pulling up around midfield. Walking it up. Cutting way back on long passes to sprinting teammates.

–And all that falling and staying down.

Jazira eventually won 3-0. In retrospect, it seemed one of those matches in which the team that scored first would almost certainly win, because “chasing the game” required energy the human body just does not have. Not even among professional athletes.

So it was that Jazira got an early goal on a turnover and never seemed in trouble. It added two goals late when Nasr seemed to have lost the will even to defend,  and everyone presumably hit the showers, drank a half-gallon of fluids and escaped into some air-conditioned room.

Oh, and there’s this: The match began at 10 p.m. Yes, at night. Because of Ramadan, and the delay necessary after the breaking of the daylight fast. Normally, they kick off around 8 and as early as 6, and it would have been even more punishing.

Anyway, I am thinking we ought to do a piece or two, at The National, on why the season started so early … whether time-wasting and stalling is, in fact, acknowledged and accepted by players (if not by coaches) … and what, if anything, players can do to otherwise minimize the astonishing demands on their bodies during a two-hour match in Death Valley-type conditions.