Almost every sports fan in the world is interested in his or her national soccer team. Certainly applies in the UAE, where the most casual of supporters can tell you where and when the UAE appeared in its first (and still only) World Cup.

That would be Italy, 1990. The UAE went out in three matches but got two goals, the first by Khalid Ismael in a 5-1 loss to West Germany, and the second by Ali Thani Jumaa, against Yugoslavia.

The next cycle of international competition is already under way, not quite two months after the 2010 World Cup. In Europe, i’s qualifying for Euro 2012.

For the UAE, it’s getting ready for the 2011 Asian Cup, the championship of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), which will be contested by 16 qualified nations from the 43 in the AFC in Qatar in January.

So, the campaign began with a match tonight against Kuwait, another Gulf state headed for the Asian Cup.

How did it turn out?

It went well for the home team, which rolled over Kuwait 3-0. Here is a link to the game story by my colleague at The National, Amith Passela.

I also was at the match, along with two other colleagues, and we constituted a semi-significant portion of the crowd. It was quite poorly attended, even though Kuwait is something of rival.

Officials put attendance at Al Nahyan Stadium, the home of Abu Dhabi club side Al Wahda, at a bit over 1,000. I thought it was more like 400. Though the people who were there were into it. A guy was leading chants, and some friends of his were beating drums.

Why so few people? Soccer just doesn’t draw well here. Expats don’t seem very interested in the national team, and nationals did not turn out in force perhaps because we are right on the cusp of Eid al Fitr, the biggest holiday of the year. Also, the match was shown on local TV, and if you can see it on high-def in your own home, why are you going to go down to Al Wahda’s stadium for a 10 p.m. kickoff?

The match was a bit ragged, but it ended well for the home side. The UAE is in a sort of race against time to get back to the World Cup before all the rising powers in Asia really begin to rise. That would be the likes of China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietname, Malaysia … countries with a known interest in the game but without national sides that reflect their people’s interest in the game.

When countries of up to 1.3 billion people (China) get serious about the game, it will be even more difficult for the UAE to compete, what with its national population of 1 million. That’s half the number of citizens in Slovenia, which was considered an extraordinarily tiny country to make the 2010 World Cup.

Also, Asia has a handful of proven sides who tend to make the World Cup every time around — Australia, Japan, South Korea. Saudi Arabia is pretty good, and Iran and Iraq can be, too. Even North Korea made the 2010 World Cup.

My sense is that the UAE’s best opportunities to make the World Cup — or win an AFC title — are in the past or will come in the very near future, and I wrote a column about that for today’s newspaper.

Seems to me that, a decade ago, if you had some money, a stable government and an international mind-set, you had a decent shot at making the World Cup. Hence, the UAE in Italy in 1990. And Saudi making it four consecutive times through 2006.

But now … with Asia as a whole seeming to rise economically and really bad governments seemingly on the retreat … it’s going to get tougher for the small countries of the Gulf. Asia soon will no longer have to worry about rivaling North America as the weakest region in the world. I’d say by 2018, at the latest.

Luckily for the UAE, its youth system seems to have produced several key players at a critical moment. A striker, name of Ahmed Khalil (who scored), a playmaking midfielder named Amer Abdulrahman (who set up a goal), a winger named Hamdan al Kamali, and a skilled defender named Khaled Sabeel. Those two were involved in setting up goals.

The UAE also has a handful of nice players from the national side that crashed out of World Cup qualifying in the final stage,  a little forward named Ismael Mater and a midfielder named Mohammed al Shehhi.

The Emiratis running the event were quite hospitable. I met several of them, and they were pleasant as could be. They not only had a big fan up to blow some cool air on reporters (a hot night; no surprise), they also distributed water to everyone and had one little TV out there so we could look at replays — which is critical to coverage. They also put out a buffet for the journalists and VIPs (don’t confuse one with the other) and that was quite nice. Not that I was able to eat, because I was filing at halftime. It would have been nice to have some lineup sheets in English (Arabic only), and maybe they can try that next time.

They conducted the post-match press conference with the coaches, which was done about as well as it could be, considering it had to be translated from Arabic to English and vice versa … and both coaches speak English as a second (or third or fourth) language.

What they are not good about here is getting players to stop in the “mixed zone” to talk to reporters. They have a mixed zone, as per Fifa rules, but it’s just about pointless.

English-only reporters don’t expect the guys who speak only Arabic to stop, but several of the younger players do speak English, and fairly well, but they just walked straight out. Hurts the coverage of the side. No question. And it’s something of a shock to American reporters who are conditioned to a fairly high level of access to our national team guys. In much of the rest of the world, the UAE included, talking to the media is seen as a no-win proposition, and the federations seem to do little or nothing to encourage conversation.

Anyway, back to the team’s potential. These guys are not bad. They have a nucleus, some athleticism, and their coach, a dour Slovenian named Srecko Katanec, seems to be doing a good job of organizing them.

My “other” home side seems to have a decent future. Which is always good when you’re in the business of covering sports.