Perhaps this represents some sort of breakthrough.

Maybe I have now seen enough soccer that I know a bad game when I see one.

Nah.

Ten years ago I would have known this was a bad game. Twenty.

Al Jazira 4, Al Wahda 3, in the Capital Derby, and an abominable performance by two Abu Dhabi clubs that were among the country’s elite just a few years ago.

How abominable? Let me count the ways.

1. Notional defense. Both sides employed four guys across the back. Mostly, however, they seemed to be out there to watch attacking players run past. “Hmm; that Argentine guy is pretty quick.”

2. Missing persons. Jazira was without its best player, the Brazilian striker Ricardo Oliveira, serving a one-match suspension for a ridiculous red card last week — two yellows in a league cup match, neither deserved.

Meanwhile, Wahda didn’t have their little captain, Ismail Matar, who is in mourning for a brother. Hamdan Al Kamali, the sometimes formidable central defender, apparently is hurt.  So, yeah, normally we would have had three very much better players (among the 22) who were out there.

3. Random dudes. This game was the first I covered in several months, but I watch both sides on television, and I never before noticed quite this many mystery men. Both ways. Sultan Bargash starts now? Who is this Ahmed Al Ghilani? During those brief intervals when I had access to the internet, I was trying to figure out concepts like … “who is the guy with the captain’s armband for Wahda?!?” Abdullah Al Nobi was how he was identified, and I am fairly sure I have never seen him play, at least not under that name.

4. New coaches. Walter Zenga, who wore a shirt with the initials WZ on it (a bit self-absorbed, are we?) took over Jazira less than a month ago, and it is not clear what he intends. The Italian may be a hothead (well, he is), but he played at the highest level (Inter; Italy’s national team) in a previous century and he is no fool. He was happy to win, but he was alarmed/appalled at some of the goals his team conceded.

Wahda’s coach, Jose Peseiro, is from Portugal and has led some good teams and is a friend of Jose Mourinho, but this was his eighth day running this club. Can’t expect him to turn things around that fast, and the team he ran out there was both too young and too old and disorganized. It will get better, I would think, but it hasn’t yet.

So, passes to no one, passes directly out of bounds, free kicks blasted into the stands, chaotic defending, several cheap goals, several missed opportunities, a bizarre incident when Wahda’s 140-pound Argentine Damian Diaz apparently was so aggrieved by … something … that he hurled into a Jazira guy, Khamis Ismail, when the latter was five years over the touch line … Zenga being banished to the stands for remonstrating with the referee … the usual faux injuries and diving … and the memories that Wahda won the Arabian Gulf League (as it is now known) in 2010 and Jazira in 2011, and that this game mattered not too long ago but certainly does not, at the moment.

Just a wretched, wretched game. Jazira has to be thankful they were playing someone even more messed up than they are.

Another issue here is that both teams have allowed their Emirati talent to grow thin. In a league where “my foreigners usually cancel out your foreigners”, it is the competence of the seven or eight Emiratis on the field (no team may have more than four expats) that determines how good you are.

Both sides allowed good Emirati players to leave or watched them grow old before intervening. Both are in a sort of middle ground now of not being awful but not being nearly good enough to contend.

And when they came together, it made for one ugly collision.