Soccer is a young man’s game.

Watching it, as well as playing it.

Well, it is if your time zones are not quite lined up.

Another week of Brazil 2014 could leave me with severe sleep deprivation, if not a sort of “never left the city” jet lag.

The issues with Brazil, when based in the UAE?

The 1 p.m. kickoffs there are 8 p.m. here. OK, not a problem.

However, the 4 p.m. kickoffs there are 11 p.m. here. Ending at 1 a.m.

And the 7 p.m. kickoffs in Brazil, popular during the first 11 days of the tournament, started at 2 a.m. here, ending at 4 a.m.

(And the U.S. twice played at 7 p.m. in Brazil, which was 6 p.m. in New York and 3 p.m. in Los Angeles, a nuisance for the work day, sure … but anyone in the UAE staying up for those games was likely going to be fried for the next day of work.)

For the past two weeks, we have had kickoffs at 8 p.m. and midnight, here. Which takes you to 2 a.m. Or more like 3, if the game goes to a shootout and a bunch have.

What happens is …

–For those of us working days, we arrived at work sleep deprived and left hoping/planning to stay up till 2 again, though we might nod out at any time and perhaps come around for the middle of the second half, which mean one hour of sleep, an hour awake, another couple of hours of sleep … and a sort of permanent sense of disorientation.

–For those on our staff who stayed late to update the web, that produced something very close to a graveyard shift — maybe 8 p.m. till about 5 a.m.  Working right through the night.

And our main online guy, who has been staying till daylight for weeks now, has been variously described as “looking a bit haggard” to “looking like hell” to “he seems on the edge of nervous breakdown”.

Luckily, for people who plan to be in the UAE four years hence. Russia 2018 should be far kinder.

This time of year, the UAE is in the same time zone at Moscow and St. Petersburg, so games kicking off any time from 1 p.m. till 8 p.m. in Russia … not a problem in Abu Dhabi!

However, for those who think they might be in California, in 2018, Russia will pose some problems.

A 1 p.m. kickoff in Moscow will be a 2 a.m. kickoff on the West Coast, and that’s a rough time to begin to spend two hours watching soccer, I can tell you from experience.

It won’t be much kinder in New York; that would be a 5 a.m. kickoff. Though games later in the day, in Moscow, would not be as awful. A 7 p.m. kickoff in Russia will be 8 a.m. in California and 11 a.m. in New York.

And if we look all the way to 2022, and the Qatar World Cup, the times will be similar; Qatar is one hour behind the UAE, 10 hours ahead of California, seven ahead of New York.

Anyway, we old people need to sleep fairly regular hours, or we start to lose it. The latest? Waking up with a start (announcer shouting) near the end of the Brazil and Colombia early this morning, then watching the end and surfing the web for information on Neymar and his injury for another couple of hours. Leaving me a jittery mess.

Only a few more days … and then we will miss the games … but get back our lives.