I was impressed by:

–Ismail Matar. The grand old man of UAE national football, all of 29, scored a goal of surpassing guile. He beat the offside trap, took a fine through-pass from the back, went in on the keeper alone, juked him to the ground, side-stepped him (above; a frame grab from The National’s Olympic home page), evaded two Uruguay defenders flying past and even as 70,000 people were thinking “this is taking too long!” stroked it into the goal.

–The attendance at the match. After two days of empty stadiums for soccer, Mancunians pretty much packed out this stadium (capacity 75,000), which made for a very nice atmosphere, even for the first (non-Team Great Britain) game

Not impressed by:

–Uruguay. Yes, they have Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani, but eight of their starters are under-23 kids, just like everyone else. Uruguay is not bad, but their U23 team should not be confused with the Uruguay who got to the semifinals of the 2010 World Cup.

–Team GB. They could muster only one against Senegal, the No. 4 team to come out of Africa, and settled for a draw when Senegal scored late. England seems wretched at developing their own talent, which is insane, considering how big soccer is.

—Old Trafford. I thought this was supposed to be like Wrigley Field or Fenway. What it is … is just a big stadium. Nothing special about the architecture, no ivy on the walls, no short porches. What seems interesting about it is also just plain odd — the stands at the two ends of the field rise much higher than the stands along the length of the field. Isn’t that kinda lame?

So, got into the stadium, had a great seat, found that all my telecommunications stuff didn’t work, so somebody involved with London 2012 must be jamming that or perhaps the capacity of the local network was overpowered by the big crowd.

The UAE played fairly well at times, and led 1-0 before Uruguay got their two. I wrote about it for The National, of course.

I also did a commentary on how for a fairly significant chunk of the game it seemed like the little team from the Gulf could pull an upset of a country ranked No. 3 in the world by Fifa.

It was a giddy stretch, and the flag-waving Emiratis around me in the stadium seemed to get a particular buzz off of it.

They love their team being involved in the Olympics, and they love it even more that this Olympics is in London, which is considered a “home away from home” for globetrotting UAE nationals.

So, a pretty good game, but I couldn’t stay for the second (Team GB and Senegal) because I had to move where I could get online. Like back at the hotel which, thankfully, was only a 15-minute walk.

The Emiratis play the Brits on Sunday in Wembley, and if the UAE can avoid a defeat, the locals are going to come down hard on their team.