The country has one professional sports league of significance,  and it’s the soccer Pro League, which is 12 teams spending significant amounts of money to try to win a domestic championship and perhaps last for a while in the Asian Champions League.

Your basic soccer competition. Except with a bit more upheaval.

If you thought that, say, baseball fires a lot of managers in a year … well, it doesn’t.

I reviewed the hiring and firing of Pro League coaches in a commentary for The National for editions of Thursday morning.

In short:

The operative statistic is … 20 coaches for 12 teams halfway through the 2010-11 season.

That’s a lot of change in managers. Makes you wonder how teams could possibly have any coherent plan or style or system.

One of the best coaches in the league, Josef Hickersberger of Al Wahda, the defending champion, gave some insights into the constant upheaval.

The key: Coaches here rarely have guaranteed contracts of any length. So it’s easy to fire them. Because they just go away. It’s not as if a team is on the hook for his salary for the rest of the year — or even longer — as they often are in American basketball or English soccer.

Hickersberger said fired coaches get only whatever the negotiated in their contract, after they are fired. He suggested one month, maybe two … even if they get fired with five months left in the season.

So, if you want to see how it’s done over here … read the column.

Here is my other fun stat: At the rate of 20 coaches for 12 teams at the midpoint of the season, we are on pave for 40 coaches from 12 teams. In one season.

Oh, and one other fun stat on why guys with pretty good resumes keep coming over here to coach: Abel Braga of Al Jazira apparently makes $300,000 a month, which is enough to make all these guys come over and roll the dice and see how long he can last.