I admire a well-run sports team as much as the next guy, and probably more so, since I have spent nearly the whole of my adult life covering sports teams. The Green Bay Packers, once upon a time. The New York Yankees from about 1920 to 1964. Yes, even the Boston Celtics, back when they were beating the Lakers in the finals every year.

But the downside to a really good club is … it can render much or even most of a league season fairly meaningless.

Such is the case this season with Al Ain and the UAE’s domestic soccer league.

Al Ain is too good. How can we tell?

Because at the halfway point of the 2012/13 season, Al Ain is seven points ahead of the second-place club.

Because Al Ain finished the first half with 11 victories, two ties and one defeat, a freakish 6-3 loss to Al Ahli in Week 1, when Al Ain coughed up a 3-2 halftime lead at home. It seemed odd at the time. In retrospect, it was bizarre.

Since then, whenever Al Ain has bumped up against another club with aspirations, however foolish, of contending for the title, they have been slapped down. Sharply. About three weeks ago, Baniyas, at home, played Al Ain with a chance to move into a tie at the top. Final: Al Ain 3-0. On Sunday, Al Nasr, at home, had a chance to move within six points at the break, the same Al Nasr who handed Al Ain its only defeat last season. Final: Al Ain 2-0.

Al Ain has scored 49 goals. In 14 matches. No one else has more than 32.

Al Ain is good. Really good. How good? I suppose we will find out when they get into the Asian Champions League, come February. But they are as good as any team I have seen here, and this is the fourth season I’ve been watching this.

They have a guy who could be (should be?) starting in the Premier League, Asamoah Gyan, who has 21 goals. In 13 matches. Sunderland had him, and he scored 10 Premier League goals for that club in 2010-11, but they somehow screwed things up so badly that Gyan asked to be loaned to this club in the UAE no one in England had heard of. And then Al Ain bought him, after he scored 22 last season. And this is the captain of Ghana’s national team we’re talking about.

Their other forward is perhaps the best player from Australia at the moment, Alex Brosque.

They have a sort of hybrid forward/midfielder named Jires Kembo Ekoko, and he is less impressive than those other two, but he ain’t bad. And the fourth expat (only four are allowed by league rules) is Mirel Radoi, a tough and savvy holding mid from Romania who is probably a sort of security blanket for Cosmin Olaroiu, the Romanian coach.

And to make Al Ain even more formidable, they have in the attacking midfielder position the best Emirati footballer, Omar Abdulrahman. Not only is he great fun to watch (the sort of guy who goes out of his way to nutmeg someone, or lift the ball over a defender and then run around him and pick it up on the back side), he is brilliant. He makes the passes no one but guys like him see.

In a way, Al Ain being good … is not becessarily bad for the league. They have won 10 championships, and no one else has won five, and they have the best and most numerous fans, and they travel. There’s that.

So these guys are good. Really good. Actually, too good. No one can hold the ball against them. No one can keep Gyan from scoring. The season is halfway over but in reality it is quite over.

I imagine Al Ain will lose a game, down the line, but everyone else is going to lose two or three or four more.

Thank goodness for the Asian Champions League and the President’s Cup. At least we have two competition to look forward to, this season, that are not fait accomplis.