Such a strange story. Blowing up the domestic football league in order to save it.

As we got into Day 3, things began to settle down.

By now, Football Association sources (and the FA is now in charge of the league) seemed to spend much of their time telling us about all the things that would not change … which begs the question: then why was the league dissolved in the first place?

Some links, after the break.

My colleague Ahmed Rizvi filed this story in which the chairman of the five-man board assembled to get a league ready for the 2011-12 season basically says “nothing will change.” The 20 or so people who are working for the dead-and-gone UAE Football League will be retained, including the chief executive Carlo Nohra. Which makes sense, given that we’re less than three months away from the originally scheduled start of the season.

The chairman of the board did, however, make very clear that the FA is in charge.

Not quite three years ago, the head of the FA, Mohammed Khalfan al Rumaithi, was quoted as saying the FA was happy that the professional league was being spun off with its own board, saying the FA didn’t have the staff to run such a large project.

And now, not quite three years later, the FA is back in control. Hmmm.

As things began to settle down, and it became clear that even if the country’s big clubs were not happy with the turn of events they were not going to raise a ruckus over it, I did a column outlining the accomplishments of the late, lamented league.

I suggested that the FA would do well to continue on the improvements the league had made because I can vouch for how much more efficiently run the league’s operations had become than anything the FA does.

The FA runs the President’s Cup, and I know from first-hand experience that it was poorly organized right through the semifinals, when wireless internet access was not available in the press box of the UAE’s biggest football stadium.

The FA also oversees the national teams, which have not exactly covered themselves with glory since 1990, when the UAE made the World Cup for the first (and last) time. In the most recent World Cup qualifying tournament, the UAE finished last in its five-team pool. Also, the UAE has never played in the Olympic soccer tournament.

It would be a shame, and a huge step backward, if the coming league felt more like “the FA running the President’s Cup” than the Pro League or Etisalat Cup, which were quite efficiently run by the vaporized UAE Football League.

Now we wait.