The Asian Champions League began on Tuesday. It’s just like the Champions League in Europe, except about 10 percent as lucrative. But who knows, someday it could be as big. Hard to imagine, now, but …

Whatever the financial ramifications or the television ratings, the Asian Champions League is fun because it is exotic.

It involves 32 club teams from across the continent. It skews heavily toward the handful of countries with the more-organized and more-competitive leagues. Those would be Japan’s, South Korea’s, Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s. Each of those countries has four entries.

The UAE also has four teams in this, and I saw two of them play, in the first round.

How did it go?

Tuesday night, the neighborhood team, Al Jazira, played Al Gharafa of Qatar about 800 yards from where I’m sitting, and it ended 0-0. Gharafa showed up looking for a scoreless draw, and it parked a bus (as Jose Mourinho might say) in front of the goal. Gharafa played a 5-3-2 formation. Really. I was there. Jazira had some scoring chances, but none were great chances, and that was that.

Tonight, I went to see Al Wahda play. Another Abu Dhabi team, but more in the center of the city.

Wahda played Bunyodkor of Uzbekistan.

They had a genuinely interesting game, one I covered for The National. Here is the match report, as the Brits would say, from that.

A bang-bang finish, which was tough on the scribes. I wrote three stories. The first was a 0-0 draw. The second was Bunyodkor wins 1-0. The third, and final, was the 1-1 finish. Made for something of a mess, right on deadline. Match started at 8.

I came back with this quotes version, above, for the web.

I found the whole thing fascinating because Bunyodkor plays nothing like the teams here in the UAE. Here, teams give up huge chunks of territory when possession changes, and typically a team can get to the attacking half before they begin to encounter any resistance. It’s something of a lazy style, for sure, but I think it also reflects the reality of playing in a league that begins and ends in scalding heat, and trying to save your energy becomes ingrained — even when it’s temperate, as it was last night.

Bunyodkor played like a Soviet team. Which makes some sense, because Uzbekistan was one of the “republics” in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR. It still has a significant Russian minority, and a Russian feel for much of what it does, including its soccer.

Bunyodkor was all over Wahda from kickoff. High pressure, instant pressure. Wahda had trouble with it for a half-hour. It was a very European style, but in that sort of semi-creepy mechanical way that the Soviets used to play.

(Another Soviet thing is to quit when you get down, as the Uzbeks did in the Asian Cup, losing 6-0 to Australia in the semifinals. But they never were behind, in this one.)

The Asian Cup probably would be bigger (and easier for local teams to survive) if it still held berths for a variety of countries instead of making the leagues earn their way, as Europe does it. A few years ago, Syria, Jordan and Iraq each got two teams, and the UAE teams could beat those guys. Now, half of the four groups in West Asia are made up of Saudi or Iranian teams, and they’re pretty solid.

China also gets four teams in this, so 24 of the 32 teams come from the six countries I’ve mentioned. The others are from Australia, Qatar, Indonesia and Uzbekistan. Not a very wide spread, but I should note that India had a chance to play its way in and got smoked.

Still, consider Wahda’s schedule: They have games in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Uzbekistan still coming up. Not an itinerary you often see in the sports world. Or consider Al Ain’s schedule. They had to qualify and were placed in the East Asia half of this. Anyway, they have trips coming to Japan, China and South Korea. Which are long trips, even from here.

Seeing various clubs try to match up with each other is fascinating. Especially when they come from cultures which approach the games so differently.

Not a good start for the UAE: Two home draws and two defeats. Going to be tough to get out of the group stage. But the two teams closest to The National at least got one point, and they still could move ahead.

Tournament resumes March 15-16.