Is this well-known in the U.S.? I tend to think it is not.

The Manchester City football team that plays in the English Premier League … that just won the English Premier League … is owned by an Abu Dhabi sheikh, Mansour bin Zayed.

So when City was trying to nail down the Premier League championship today, ahead of Manchester United, it was a very, very big deal in the newsroom of The National, as well as in many quarters of the emirate, and even the UAE.

Such a big deal that the sports department was cheering.

Let me assure everyone, that I was not cheering. I don’t cheer. Been in too many press boxes, going back too long in time.

Sheikh Mansour, whose late father, Sheikh Zayed, is often referred to as “the father of the country”, is the deputy prime minister, and also the half-brother of the current president, Sheikh Khalifa, and the full brother of the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed.

Got all that?

Anyway, Manchester City has been adopted as Abu Dhabi’s team because, well, “we” own it.

When Sheikh Mansour took over, in 2008, he began pumping huge amounts of money into the team, and City began to move up. This was a club that had not won the top flight since 1968.

Today, the final day of the Premier League season, City could clinch the championship (ahead of arch-rival Manchester United) with a victory at home, where they had not lost this season, against Queens Park Rangers, the worst road team in the league.

Everyone expected this to be easy, and it looked as if it would when City got a first-half goal.

That meant that the sports section could continue to prepare for five pages of coverage, and the news department could plan for the three stories they had on it …

But wait.

QPR scored early in the second half, and now there was trouble. A tie by City and a win by United would give the red side of Manchester  the championship, and United was up 1-0 at Sunderland.

Then QPR scored a go-ahead goal in the 64th minute, and we had a real crisis on our hands. City was about to choke away a championship that Abu Dhabi felt belonged in part to the UAE … and on the journalistic side, we had several stories predicated on a City victory, and the section would have to be torn up.

QPR already had a guy sent off, their idiot captain Joey Barton, and then they were defending … and defending … and defending with 10 guys against a better team.

Clock hit 70 minutes, 75, 80, 85 … still 2-1 QPR, and now the department is fully into Plan B mode, and the City fans in Manchester were about to lose it. Some were weeping, in the stands, and others were caught on TV having fits of anger/frustration.

Clock at 90, and now the five minutes of added time comes up, most of it due to Joey Barton and the drawn-out mess of him being sent off for trying to assault half the City team.

Finally, 91st minute, Edin Dzeko scored on a header. City has a chance, now, but United’s match has gone final, and those guys have won (and think they are champions), so City has to win, too … or finish a ridiculously painful second.

Then, in the 94rd minute, Sergio Aguero, the son-in-law of Diego Maradona (who is coaching up the road, at Al Wasl, in Dubai), made a little diagonal run in the box, got a teeny bit of separation from exhausted QPR defenders … and scored.

Chaos. People in powder blue running around the stadium. Fans going nuts. Employees at The National shouting.

(Personally, I wanted City to lose, because I don’t like the “bought championship” thing. Reminded me of the Yankees. I was in the minority, however, aside from the one die-hard United fan in the department who was, I think, dying a little.)

But I can accept that a newspaper-wide plan did not have to be thrown out the window, and Abu Dhabi could bask in the attention of owning the champions of the Premier League.

Half of page 1 was about the game, and two pages inside the news section … and we had three pages of “congratulations” full-page ads, and we had all sorts of bells and whistles in the sports section, including the basic gamer, a scene-setter and an analysis of the championship season.

This was a big deal here. People in England were calling it the most exciting finish in Premier League history, and it was hard to beat. Yes.

It may even make local people here feel more kindly towards City. I really do believe they have been no more than the No. 3 team in the country — behind Real Madrid and Barcelona, neither of which is owned by a member of the UAE government.