I was still a little hazy about this, before I got to the UAE. Because in the United States, the idea of one sports league competing for at least three championships in one season … is ridiculous.

One league, one champion, right? Simple.

But that is not how they roll in nearly every serious soccer nation. They prefer to have at least three distinct competitions, interwoven through one, long season.

This is how they do it:

First, is the league. That is straightforward. Everybody plays everybody else twice, home and away, and the team with the best record at the end of the season wins the championship — and this championship generally is regarded as the most significant.

Second, is the “all/many clubs in the country” competition. In England it is known as the FA Cup. In Spain, the Copa del Rey. In the UAE, it is the President’s Cup.

In this competition, all professional clubs in the country (and maybe some not even really professional) play in a knockout competition. In England, I believe that includes more than 700 teams, though the top leagues do not join the competition until the little guys are pretty much done beating up on each other. In the UAE, it is the 14 teams of the lower division and the 12 in the Pro League.

In most countries, this “all teams” competition is the second-most important competition of the season. It is in England and in the UAE, certainly.

Third, most countries round out their trio of competitions with some sort of “league” cup. In England, it is the Carling Cup and involves the top two divisions. In the UAE, it is the Etisalat Cup and involves only the 12 top-flight clubs. Generally, it is a knockout competition inside the top league. Which is a bit redundant to the overall championship, yes.

This is almost always the least significant of a country’s three competitions, but for clubs who haven’t won anything in a while, winning this can be fairly sweet. (Bimingham, in England, last year; Al Shabab in the UAE.)

The eventual winners tend not to spend much time thinking about the big clubs who didn’t bother to field their best team while playing in the Carling or Etisalat cups.

Again, to reinforce: These competitions run concurrently. A club could be playing in all three in a span of two or three weeks.

Would this work in American sports?

Probably not.

If we laid it over baseball, for instance … we would have the current all-season competition … but the one involving all professional clubs, including the minor leagues, wouldn’t really work because nearly all minor-league clubs are owned by major-league clubs … and the third competition, the top clubs playing each other again in a knockout tournament … that would just seem lame.

Would it work in football? The regular season, then maybe a season in which college teams and even semi-pro teams are in a competition with NFL teams? That actually wouldn’t be as weird as minor-league ball teams playing major-league teams. But still …

And a tournament inside the NFL, in addition to the overall year thing … Just don’t see the 32 teams playing a five-round knockout tournament on top of the 16-game schedule.

Could Major League Soccer do three competitions? In theory, yes. Maybe they should think about an “all clubs” competition, anyway, but they do not have them, curretly.

Anyway, in sports cultures where these multiple competitions are well-established (and in many countries they do it in basketball, too), it means your team has multiple chances to win something. Even more if you are competing in some sort of continental competition, such as the Champions League and the second-tier Europa League in Europe.

It can be confusing, for sure. Which is why for the Thursday a.m. newspaper I did a piece reminding everyone of Who Is Playing For What here in the UAE, two-thirds of the way through the 2011/12 season.

My theory is that because soccer is so consuming in so many places, they need these extra competitions to retain interest.

They also use relegation (the bottom two or three teams dropping down a division) as a way to stoke interest, too.

Once you accept the redundant competitions, and the concept of relgation and promotion … it does tend to keep more fans interested longer and, of course, generate more money for everyone involved.