Super Bowl Sunday is, in the Middle East … Sunday. The first day of the work week. Nothing super about it, unless you’re an American or a Canadian or one of those rare non-North Americans who are interested in the NFL.

In the UAE, the big story in world football today (after the Chelsea-Manchester United game, of course) was their Olympic team playing a qualifying match for the London 2012 Games. Against Iraq. In Doha, capital of Qatar.

You know — where the 2022 World Cup will be held.

This continues to amaze me.

I have been to Doha three times since Fifa awarded the 2022 World Cup to the little Gulf nation, and I still have no idea how they will pull this off.

Doha has severe traffic problems, no rapid transit more significant than a bus and an airport that is nearly overwhelmed by travelers on a daily basis.

It also is home to 1.5 million people, which sounds like a lot, but actually means it is about the same size as Phoenix — without the benefit of populous suburbs and with weather even more unpleasant.

How they plan to get 32 World Cup teams and maybe 500,000 visiting fans into this one traffic-clotted, mostly charmless city during the height of the Gulf summer … it still seems like madness.

It seems more so when coming from the UAE, which crushes Qatar in every observable category of attractiveness, sophistication and multiculturalism. Everything, that is, aside from the sheer chutzpah necessary to bid for the right to stage a World Cup. Qatar did have that going for them.

(You mean all that the UAE had to do was … ask?!? Kills me. Kills me. Been a year; still not over it.)

Anyway, two threads here.

First, my business in Doha was seeing the UAE Under 23 (Olympic) team play. This are the country’s golden boys, the guys who have been out winning things (or nearly so) for the past few years while the senior national team has been, mostly, falling flat. Local soccer fans love the Olympic team.

It was Iraq’s home match, but it was in Doha because Iraq hasn’t played a home home match in a long time. (War and such; you may have read about it.) As their coach told me afterward: “The national teams haven’t played in Baghdad in 20 years; this is normal for us.”

Anyway, Iraq had stunned the UAE 2-0 in Al Ain back in November, leaving the London 2012 campaign nearly dead and local soccer fans depressed. The winner of Group B goes directly to the Olympics, but as the day began the UAE was last. The table: Uzbekistan 5, Iraq 4, Australia 3, UAE 2. With three matches, each, to play.

Also, the UAE had failed to score in three matches. Yeah. That’s a problem.

The game was at the Al Arabi club stadium, which holds about 18,000 and is near the airport. Which is fine by me. The UAE got a stunning goal from long range in the third minute by a kid named Ahmed Ali, then clung to that like a life raft and won, 1-0.

I was the only UAE print reporter at the match, and did a game story noting that the goal-scorer had promised the coach a month ago that he would score in this game … and then a column in which I suggest that the failures of the Olympic team, before this 1-0 win, were more depressing in the UAE than the national team’s faceplant — because of differing expectations.

Anyway, UAE Olympic team … back in it! If they can beat Australia on February 22, they could go to Uzbekistan in March with a chance to win the group. And if they finish second, they go into a three-team playoffs with one last shot at a London berth — which would be huge huge huge here. (The UAE soccer team has never played in the Olympics.)

The second thought pertains to the Doha experience, and particularly going through their airport — which is nightmarish.

I will concede that the Qataris know that Doha International Airport is not up to snuff, and in theory a new and bigger one comes on line late this year. After various expansions, that will be the airport handling 2022 World Cup traffic.

But for the moment, DOH (really; that’s the airport code; straight out of The Simpsons!) is awful.

My first and most basic complaint: No jetways. (Those tubes connecting the plane with the terminal.) None. Zero. Not even for the domestic carrier, which I was flying.

Every flight ends with a bus ride, and every flight out begins with another. I hate airport buses. Just when you think you can stretch out in a terminal, there’s a bus — and the DOH buses drive for miles before they get where they are going.

If you can’t have an airport with jetways, you shouldn’t be allowed to stage a Boy Scout Jamboree, never mind a World Cup.

So, that “one-hour” flight turns into a four-hour ordeal, door-to-terminal. Taxi, check-in, boarding, late plane (coming and going), one hour in the air, another half hour, minimum, before reaching the DOH terminal, where passport control is always a very long line (and they charge you 100 Qatari riyals — $27 — for the pleasure of entering the country).

I spent the afternoon at an uninspired mall, transcribing tape, emailing, from a coffee shop. When I went out to look for a cab to take me to the stadium … I stood on a main street and … waited. And waited.  Finally a battered old car pulled up and a Bangladeshi guy offered to take me to the stadium for 20 riyals. I offered 15. He accepted, which means he would have done it for 10. Whatever.

The stadium worked, and the UAE won, and I had two hours to write 1,200 words, and did it, though it was tight … and then began the trip back.

No cabs in the area. Of course. Doha is infamous for its lack of cabs, particularly by UAE standards. I began walking towards a hotel I had stayed at before, and that was 30 minutes over unlighted streets, trying not to trip in the dark, and when I got near the hotel another Bangladeshi guy pulled up and offered to give me a ride … and having failed to see a cab over the previous half hour, I took him up on it.

He was a cheerful guy, even if he has been home only once in three years. He said he works as a driver for a Qatari family, and after he is let go for the day he works for a few hours as a gypsy cabbie.

I told him I had no idea how Doha was going to pull off the World Cup, and he laughed aloud before adding: “All people say that!”

He was such a pleasant chap that I gave him all the riyals I had left, 24, which is about $7.

Back at the DOH airport. Because I was flying the domestic carrier I was sent through a quick line — which simply got me to the Duty Free area sooner. Not that I wanted anything there. (No alcohol sales in Qatar; much tighter about this than the UAE.)

The departure area of DOH is enormous. Immense. I believe it has 60 gates (which take you to buses), and most of it is on the second floor. It’s so big that to be at one end you cannot see the other, and not because of the 10,000 people between one end and the other. Oh, and my flight was at 1:15 a.m., which is the peak of the DOH airport day.Everyone flies into and out of DOH, or changes planes, in the middle of the night. Weird.

After three hours of waiting (it only seemed like five), I got to the bus, which took me on the long, long ride to the plane … where we sat on the ground waiting for more passengers … and took off 30 minutes late.

I got on the ground in Abu Dhabi at 3:30 or so, blew through immigration, bought five bottles of wine at Duty Free, blew through customs and was in a cab five minutes later. Home at 4 a.m. –19 hours after I left.

I had planned to watch the rest of the Super Bowl, but my ESPN connection failed … and I also lapsed into a coma about 5 a.m.

That’s how I spent my Super Bowl Sunday. I’ve had better. Actually, just about all of them because none involved flying to and from Qatar.