North America is the only major continent that doesn’t have a really fun continental soccer championship. Probably because the U.S. and Mexico dominate things so thoroughly … well, of course that’s it. Where’s the fun in that? Mexico or the U.S. have won nine of the last 10 championships, with Canada slipping in there in 2000. But it’s hard to find teams that can hang with the Big Two. Can’t really get a competitive eight out North America, never mind 16.

Doesn’t help that the Gold Cup (as it is called) is played every two years, too. Cheapens it.

In Asia, however, more than a little parity exists, and the quadrennial Asian Cup is a very big deal.

I wrote about this in a column for The National which appeared in the Wednesday newspaper.

The Asian Cup has been won by seven Asian Football Confederation’s 46 members, which is spreading things around pretty well. Nobody has won more than three times, the number Saudi Arabia, Japan and Iran are tied at.

Australia now is part of the AFC, which it did to make it easier to get into the World Cup, and it’s working out so far. The Aussies bring another championship-caliber team to the party.

But some of the little people of the continent are here, too. Syria and Jordan don’t win much of anything. India never does. China rarely does.  Of course, those latter two are “little” only in the soccer context.

The event will be closely watched over the next three-plus weeks. The National will have a reporter on the scene beginning tomorrow to see how the UAE does, and to follow the other story lines, several of which I enumerate in the column.

Every match will be shown live on local television and will get some big numbers, no doubt. If 10 percent of the people in China and India watch … that’s about 230 million viewers, or nearly twice as many as see a Super Bowl.