When you are the visiting team in Beirut, you know your night did not go well when some of the local citizens let off a few rounds of celebratory gunfire after the score goes final. It probably also was not a good night when your coach is fired about 90 minutes after the game.

Which is what happened to the UAE here as Lebanon, ranked No. 160 in the world by FIFA, overpowered the Emiratis in a mind-boggling, World Cup qualifying upset.

A journalist here described the domestic league as “semi-pro, basically,” yet the home team outran and outplayed the UAE pros quite thoroughly, and probably ruined their chances of getting to the 2014 World Cup.

It probably is no consolation to the Emiratis that they seemed to make a lot of Lebanese quite happy — the 4,000 plus at the game and those who piggy-backed on the unexpected triumph and were honking horns and waving flags hours after the game. The president of the Lebanon Football Association was on the front page of the Daily Star, smiling broadly with the winning team.

People were even talking about Lebanese soccer perhaps making a comeback, after this key result (biggest since that tie at Saudi Arabia about five years ago), and perhaps displacing basketball, which is now the No. 1 sport here. Yes. Basketball.

It started with the UAE scoring the first goal … and ended with a pensive Srecko Katanec, the new ex-coach, sitting with his glum assistants in the lobby of the team hotel, going over what went wrong.

Katanec’s verdict was, essentially, that his team is out of shape and couldn’t keep pace, after the first 25 minutes. He blames too many players for sitting around for weeks during Ramadan, which ended last week, doing little or nothing to stay in shape. “A professional player, you don’t need the coach telling you what to do,” he said during a sort of rambling review of events. “You know what to do yourself.”

At any rate, Lebanon thoroughly outplayed the UAE over the last hour. The Cedars (as they sometimes refer to their team) got even on a penalty in the 37th minute, and took the lead in the 52nd (as the crowd of flag-waving, face-painted fans, many of them women and children) roared and got giddy.

And they clinched it with a counterattack goal in the 85th minute against a dispirited and disorganized UAE side.

Katanec was gracious with reporters afterward, and he seemed actually to believe he might stay in his post. But he then went on to a meeting with the FA president — who had come out of the stands to go into the lockerroom area at halftime, perhaps to try to pep up the lads. That was when Srecko learned he was gone, and the rumors on who might replace him (Abel Braga, formerly of Al Jazira, anyone?) really heated up.

Right after the match, I didn’t know Katanec was officially out, so I wrote two stories about how he was in trouble — and filed them in a hurry because they were shutting down the stadium; I literally was one of the last four people to leave the darkened venue and almost fell into the long-jump pit.

After getting a ride back to the hotel from the kindly and helpful media officer for the Lebanon FA (not his fault that power surges knocked down the wifi connection more than once) … the office found me as I was walking into the lobby and asked me to go to the team hotel and see what I could find. So I did … and I discovered Srecko and four of his key guys, now all out of work, sitting and rehashing things and sorta watching Kuwait and South Korea play in the other Group B game, a game that no longer mattered to them.

A bizarre and chaotic night, with stories being written, filed, torn up, thrown out, revised. The sort of night that makes you, as a sports reporter facing deadline, majorly overrevved and perhaps a little nauseous as you climb into cabs and ask to go who-knows-where with no idea how you will get back, or how you will file.

My final contribution were details from Katanec on his firing sent from the Heliopolitan hotel’s business center, where I was working after almost knocking myself out (quite literally) by walking face-first into a glass door so clean I never saw it until I felt it. No blood, however, so I was good to go.

Srecko had a little parting shot for me as I left. The day before I had written a column about the ups and (especially) the downs of his two years, and suggested he would be fired if he didn’t get a good result against the historically weak Lebanese.

“You write some not-very-nice things about me,” he said. I smiled. Maybe shrugged. Then he said, “Do you play football?” I said, “I played American football.” And he nodded, like he had scored some significant point. (Americans clearly can’t/don’t know anything about soccer, apparently. Even if they have covered four World Cup finals and about a thousand Landon Donovan games.)

Some links: What’s left of the game story (after stripping out the “he might be gone” stuff); and here is the firing story, and the top of it was written by my colleague at The National, Amith Passela, who got the media officer back in the UAE to confirm. The stuff lower down, from Katanec, is my contribution.

Now, to the airport, and the flight back to Abu Dhabi. Hasn’t been dull for a minute, yet. I could stand a few, though.