It was my turn to do our “big” column in the sports section, and I decided that the most topical concept was the U.S.-Mexico soccer match.

Normally, I wouldn’t spend much time on this in the UAE. This is a British-oriented sports section with a strong Indian/Pakistani (read: cricket) undertow, and a soccer game in North America might not interest.

What I did, then, was try to put it in a global context, and I do believe this:

Mexico and the U.S. have one of the best national-team rivalries in the world.

Who compares?

Brazil-Argentina. Maybe England-Germany, Maybe Spain-Portugal.

Most rivalries, over here in the Old World, tend to be more club-oriented. When they get to international tournaments everybody is a rival. Not one specific country.

In the U.S., however, you have two significant soccer powers, and they have a long border and a lot of history … and it’s a big rivalry. All of Mexico knows about it and a significant fraction of the U.S. does now, too.

So, here is what I wrote for the Monday editions of The National … because the result of the game did not get into the Sunday editions. (And some of the “misspelling”? That’s how Brits prefer to spell those words. Like “instalment” …

It is fair to say that North America has been the least-welcoming continent to association football, and it might be so even now were it not for a squalid attempt 23 years ago to cheat the system.

For most of a century, Mexican football and North American football were pretty much the same thing. Cornish miners introduced the game to Mexico in the 1890s and the country took to it immediately, even as the United States and Canada played indigenous sports like baseball and ice hockey. By 1907, Mexico had a league; a few decades later a formidable national side was in operation; in 1970 and 1986 the country hosted the World Cup.

However, in 1988 Mexico used four overage players in an Under 20 tournament, and Fifa hammered the country with a two-year ban ahead of the 1990 World Cup. The United States seized the opening created by Mexico’s absence and a team of amateurs dramatically qualified for Italy 1990, ending a 40-year absence from the global football stage and rescuing the game from stateside obscurity.

Mexico still rues missing the 1990 World Cup, but the disaster yielded something more lasting: one of the least-recognised but most-passionate rivalries in world football.

It was renewed late Saturday at the Rose Bowl in Southern California, when Mexico defeated the US 4-2 before 93,000 in the frenetic final to the Gold Cup, the continental championship, also earning for “El Tricolores” a 2013 Confederations Cup berth in Brazil as well as the sweet  satisfaction of putting the gringos in their place — as the “other” major power of the new North America.

The US had developed the maddening habit of defeating Mexico in matches on the northern side of the border, winning nine and tying two from 12 games since 2000, a condition El Tri’s supporters considered profoundly unnatural, given their birthright as North American masters of the game and football’s US status as, perhaps, the fifth-most-popular sport.

The results not only indicated the US rise in the game, it emphasised Mexican parochialism; the country’s best players were routinely humbled if they ventured to Europe, with the notable exception of Hugo Sanchez, and their national teams were different entities when not playing on Mexican soil, and in particular at Estadio Azteca, their 120,000-capacity, 2,240-metre aerie in Mexico City.

The rivalry was further fueled by utterly divergent approaches to the game. Mexico typically pressed relentlessly, flopped theatrically and saw no harm in throwing elbows when the referee was not looking. The US was almost naively direct, ceding ball control and typically waiting for a pregnant moment to counter-attack, most memorably in a 2-0 victory over Mexico in the knockout stage of the 2002 World Cup, an event that left Mexico in mourning and may even have been noticed by a few million Americans.

More subtext: history, economics and immigration.

In the middle of the 19th century, the US army occupied Mexico City, and about half of Mexico’s land mass became US territory, forming most of six US states from California to Texas. Then, about 30 years ago, millions of Mexicans began leaving their impoverished country to live and work in the US, legally or otherwise, many of them taking low-paying jobs in big-city barrios.

In many cases, the immigrants’ bodies were in El Norte but their souls remained in Mexico, and when the beloved national side played a game in the US they packed out the stadiums, cursed the Yankees and whistled and jeered during the US national anthem.

A series of such “away” games inside US borders so unnerved US Soccer that it began scheduling World Cup qualifiers with Mexico in small stadiums in cold cities where it could channel tickets to US citizens, tactics which only further angered Mexico’s fans, many of whom still made long journeys to support their team.

When the Gold Cup final was set this year for the Rose Bowl, a grand and historic venue within a few miles of millions of Mexico natives, it was safe to predict the majority of tickets would land in the hands of El Tri’s fans. Indeed, one observer estimated that 80,000 of the people in the stadium on Saturday night were Mexico supporters, and they gleefully shouted “burro!” (donkey) when players from the home team were introduced.

El Tri’s supporters were treated to an impressive performance by three of their country’s modern international stars. Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, the Manchester United striker, so preoccupied the US defense that Pablo Barrera, whose rights are owned by West Ham United, scored twice; and Giovani Dos Santos, a product of Barcelona’s La Masia academy whose contract is held by Tottenham Hotspur, scored the clinching goal.

The victory was even sweeter given that the US had vaulted to a 2-0 lead after 23 minutes on goals by Michael Bradley and Landon Donovan, and the relative youth of the Mexico side who fought back so capably.

Long after the match, tens of thousands of Mexico fans booed the US team one more time as they accepted but did not wear their silver medals, and cheered their young heroes when they picked up gold and a trophy approximately the size of a compact car.

Mexico now holds a 32-15-11 advantage over the Yankees, and even if most of those 32 victories came before the history-turning episode of 1988, the most pertinent facts are those from the latest instalment of the great rivalry: Mexico 4, US 2; June 25, 2011.