We live in a soccer culture, here in the UAE. But even after 2.5 years of being immersed in it, I do not have fully formed opinions on many of the world’s biggest teams and leagues.

I have discovered, however, that two teams are beginning to bug me. And No. 1 on the list?

FC Barcelona.

Better known as Barcelona and also known as “Barca” (with the “c” having an “s” sound).

They annoy me.

They win too much. There’s that. And the globe’s sports fans, shameless frontrunners, tend to attach themselves like barnacles to the bandwagon of the most successful team around.

(The UAE, for example, is lousy with fans of England’s Big Four, and nearly the whole of the country seems to have chosen up sides in the matter of Barcelona v Real Madrid.)

I don’t mind Real Madrid. I kinda like them, actually. The snow-white uniforms, is part of it.

But also, they seem like a real soccer team, complete with some big guys and some bangers-cum-goons … (Pepe, anyone?) which Barcelona does not have.

Here is Barcelona’s thing: They recruit tiny men, then they starve them half to death so that they can sprint for 90 minutes, and they “tika-taka” you to death. A zillion passes of 15 yards. They get opponents to chase. Opponents open up a crack. Tiny li’l Lionel Messi darts into space and scores.

I concede that the days of lumbering men playing long balls over the top are gone (aside from, perhaps, Ireland) … but Barcelona is taking the sport someplace I would not like to see it go. Overly delicate. Too prissy. Too refined.

I suppose it comes down to this: Is soccer a metaphor for war … or for ballet?

I tend to tilt towards the former. This is a contact sport, and no team should be constructed as if it is not.

I appreciate that soccer is a sport for the little guy, and I am fine with that. Baseball has some of that, too. As does hockey. But Barcelona is an entire team of finesse players. I don’t believe that should be rewarded forever.

Consider the height of Barcelona’s key players.

5-foot-7: Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez.

5-foot-8: Dani Alves

5-foot-9: Javier Mascherano.

Carles Puyol, the magnificently maned defender, claims to be 5-10, which I don’t for a moment believe. Cesc Fabregas claims 5-10 1/2, and I don’t believe that, either.

And it’s not just the lack of height; as I mentioned, it’s the scrawniness of Barcelona’s guys. I really do wonder if they sign a guy, a great player, and the first thing they tell him is, “You need to lose 15 pounds. You’re not nearly skeletal enough.”

If you saw Barcelona and Chelsea in the Champions League semi-finals today, you saw a situation in which every Chelsea player towered over his Barca counterpart.

And even Barca’s handful of tall-ish guys, like Gerard Pique, seem as if they have just been picked up off a life raft in the middle of the Atlantic, having subsisted on a bag of peanuts for two months.

So.

Really good teams, skilled, smart, but perhaps not sufficiently nimble to run side by side with Barcelona’s players and burrow into tiny holes in a defense, have discovered a method for defeating a team of very small, very frail, highly skilled men.

“Park the bus in front of the goal” is how they describe it, over here in the Old World.

Chelsea conceded three-quarters of the field (and three-quarters of possession) to Barcelona, kept at least nine men behind the ball, and dared Messi & Co. to penetrate the middle of their defense.

Couldn’t do it. Not even with Chelsea reduced to 10 men for the final hour of the match.

In 180 minutes, two games, Barcalona scored two goals against pack-it-in Chelsea. Most of those 180 minutes featured Barcelona knocking the ball around the twin lines of Chelsea defenders, probing, probing, probing … but not having the physical strength or size to force a break.

Chelsea ceded both wings, going out to confront a Barca player only when he was already out there … and daring them to cross a ball into the box — because Barcelona’s attacking players are so tiny they are unlikely to win any ball in the air. (It also made for a series of “short” corners; Barcelona knew it was pointless to try a real corner, into the box.)

Fans of Barcelona complained that Chelsea’s plan was dull and ruined the show and showed contempt for Barcelona’s great skill.

(And that whining is one of the reasons I don’t like Barcelona, because they and their fans seem to think they reinvented the game and are the sole purveyors of the best form of it. “You’re not playing into our strengths! That’s not fair!”)

Barca lacks the physical dimension to score against a disciplined team who could get a counter-attack goal or two (as Chelsea did) … and the rest of the time just defend, defend, defend and, when possible, push and bump and barge in on the bitty Barca guys.

I was glad to see them go out of the Champions League, and I was pleased to see Real Madrid all but eliminate them from championship contention in the Spanish league.

Barcelona discovered the up side to playing with tiny men who can do tricks with a ball. Chelsea and Inter (two years ago) and even Real seem to have found the antidote. Let the little guys pass the ball all night. Can’t score if you don’t take a shot.

The game shouldn’t be that beautiful.