The UAE is the host country of the Fifa Under 17 World Cup, the biggest soccer tournament ever staged in this country.

As host, the country gets a team in the tournament, and the Emirati teens had done well in their long, very long (and certainly expensive) preparations for the tournament. Which included camps at both ends of Eurasia, as well as numerous matches, some against older players.

So, the tournament started today, with the UAE widely expected to have not much trouble with Honduras, and how did that go?

Badly. Pretty much like you would not want an opener to go.

It started with a rocky opening 20 minutes or so, with Honduras’s kids scoring for a shocking 1-0 lead. They looked good, actually. Worthy of a country that just qualified for the Big Boy World Cup, in Brazil next year.

The Honduras goal was soon followed by a two-footed flying challenge by one of the UAE’s midfielders — who was promptly red-carded (and deservedly so) by the Italian referee … and now the UAE was down to 10 men with 65 minutes to play, a goal down.

To their credit, the Emiratis moved into a tie in the 33rd minute on a goal by Khaled Khalfan, and they seemed the better team for about 50 minutes, even a man down

But the local kids seemed to tire in the final 10 minutes, and Honduras took control again, and scored in the 86th minute, and what was supposed to be three UAE points on opening night turned into a dispiriting defeat — with Brazil (gulp) up next.

The UAE Football Association no doubt would be in deep depression if this were a 32-team tournament, because no points after one game and Brazil up next would pretty much be a “no chance” situation in a top-two-advance scenario.

But with 24 teams here (six groups of four), four third-place teams reach the knockout round of 16, and if the UAE can keep Brazil from winning by a bunch of goals (as they did in a 6-1 rout of Slovakia) … the UAE could beat Slovakia soundly, in the final group game, and finish third — and they would have a decent shot at being among the four (of six) third-place teams to make the last 16.

They need to do something, soon, because this is not a country that has much patience with teams perceived to be losers. Being part of the team that couldn’t get out of the group, at home … well, it would stick to those players.

The senior side is without question the most popular sports team in the country, because it hasn’t lost in 15 matches and just moved up to No. 71 in the world — the highest the UAE has been ranked since 2007.

The majority of that team is a group of guys known as the Golden Generation, who had lots of age-group success — and would have beaten that Honduras team, no problem.

Hope had been held out that the current U17 kids could represent another Golden Generation, but by definition a generation doesn’t come around twice in a seven-year period.

A country with a small population (about 1 million Emiratis) probably is not going to produce a half-dozen top players in every birth year.

Unless the 17YO Emiratis show well against Brazil, and beat Slovakia, we will put that Golden Generation Redux thing on abeyance.