Whenever someone visits us in Abu Dhabi, I try to get them to a local soccer match. As I have noted before.

For one, it’s free. Also, the crowd will be overwhelmingly Emirati, and the way that crowd reacts is a revelation, too, to visitors who typically spend their days in crowds of expatriates.

Which is why we made the effort, last night, to get to Al Ahli’s stadium and see their Asian Champions League match with Al Ain.

For our young visitor from the States, it was a revelation.

So, we had done Burj Khalifa (tallest building) and Dubai Mall (biggest mall), but what else could we do that would be instructive about Dubai and the UAE?

Go to the soccer game.

We made the long hike back to the metro station from the mall, and spent about $3 each for a metro ticket to the aptly named “Stadium” stop — a short walk from Ahli’s home ground.

The train was crowded, as it often is, and when we got to Union station, one of the two places where riders can change from the red to the green line, the masses of people overwhelmed us.

We went down the escalator to the Green Line platform … and people could hardly move. It was almost scary, it was so packed. Our visitor already had made a comment about “personal space” and there would be none … none at all, on this train. It would be hot and unpleasant, and I said, “Let’s go up and get a cab.”

So, out of the station and into a big, cement plaza. Immediately, it struck me that this part of Dubai was not the new, tall, glimmering Dubai most tourists come to see.

This was the old (and “old” in the UAE is 20 years) Dubai. Barely three stories tall. Crumbling in that way buildings do here after a decade of summers. No Emiratis to be seen; only expats. Cheap shwarma stands, money-changing places, old hotels.

I was glad we came up there, because I had no idea any of Dubai looked like that.

We found a cab, with an unhappy driver, perhaps an occupational hazard in a city with nightmarish traffic, especially at about 7 p.m.

Within yards of getting in the cab, we were in a severe traffic knot. No accidents; that’s just how Dubai is. (And it makes you wonder if the place would be in constant gridlock, without the metro.)

From Union to Stadium is, as I recall, five stops. Maybe 10 minutes via metro, and about the same in a car — if traffic is light. At, say, 11 p.m.

We hit several consecutive lights that required three cycles before we could get through them. It turned into a 25-minute, 25-dirham ride before we were deposited outside the Ahli club’s gate.

The place was jumping. Which doesn’t happen often at clubs here.

The top league, the Arabian Gulf League, is made up of 14 teams and sometimes it seems like some matches go off with about 14 people in the stands.

The Emirati populace is not big enough to create big crowds regularly. Women don’t go, and men over 30 are unlikely to go, either. A few expats might see a game, but they might number 20-30 people.

So, Emiratis are needed to push the attendance number, and it helps if no other major soccer league is playing and, on a Wednesday, none were.

We first asked an usher where we, as not-partisan fans, should sit. Most soccer stadiums, of course, have a section for visiting fans, and the rest is the home team’s. But in some places, and the UAE is one of them, one wedge of seats might be set aside for neutrals. Well, in theory.

We were told to go to Gate 6, on the other side of the stadium. We got there, and it was jammed with guys in kanduras trying to get in through a narrow gate. We were advised to go to Gate 7, also jammed by young guys in kanduras. We maneuvered our way in.

As is standard practice here, we were handed tickets as we began to enter the stadium, and then the security guys at the gate, about 10 feet later, checked those tickets. In theory, it cost 10 dirhams ($2.72). In practice, it cost nothing and, in theory, a shiekh had paid for all the tickets, then had them distributed.

(Soccer here seems to be viewed as an Emirati civil right; your local sheikh creates a team, and often a whole club, with maybe an arena and pool and a chess club and a bowling alley, and Emirati citizens pay nothing.)

Because it was a big game, the club also seemed to be giving out free wigs, and T-shirts. We were not offered any, but perhaps we were in the wrong line. And, then, we were not going to wear red fright wigs.

We were frisked, once past the gate, and the policeman felt all sorts of things in the big pockets of my cargo pants, but then he looked up at me and shook his head and smiled (“old guy, not going to cause trouble”), and I was through without displaying my phone and wallet and car keys.

So, into the stadium, and it was surprisingly crowded. To think it through, if any game would draw a crowd, this was it. Ahli and Al Ain have become major rivals, and this was an Asian Champions League round-of-16 match (first leg). Ahli clearly was making an effort to create a good atmosphere.

They succeeded.

Ahli is a small stadium with one level around the field, maybe 12-15 rows high. All the upper seats, with the better vantage points, were taken so I picked a couple of spots in Row 2, where it would be hard to see the ball when it was on our side of the field, but at least it wasn’t wall-to-wall soccer fans there.

Even before we sat, an Emirati father offered us a red towel to wipe off the plastic seats, which were quite dirty, actually. I thanked him for it; had we been wearing white kanduras, as he and his sons were, and sat down in that, the dirt would have been a disaster.

As soon as we sat, the same man offered us bags of sunflower seeds. I took one and said thanks and immediately began eating the seeds; the UAE culture, like many others, is one where it is not a good idea to turn down a gift. Plus, I like sunflowers. It was a nice gesture.

My companion spent the next two hours mostly just watching everything about him. We could see at least 1,000 Al Ain fans in purple at the other end of the stadium. They had a big drum and a singer leading them in calls — specific to this region, maybe specific to the country.

The ambient noise was fairly high, and the stadium continued to fill, eventually creating a crowd of 8,900, according to the official report.

The game gave us lots of action but zero goals. It was hot, and when the sun went down the humidity went up (we were sweating as we sat), and a scoreless draw was always a major possibility.

It was interesting, sitting next to the adult Ahli fan. His English was limited (but not as limited as my Arabic), and once in a while we would make comments for the benefit of the other.

Ahmed Khalil, Ahli’s athletic forward and semi-regular scoring hero for the UAE national team (but not for Ahli), is a brutal technical player, unable to dribble a ball or trap it, and he had a pass come directly to him, just in front of us, and he could have had a chance to score … but he could not control the ball and Al Ain kicked it away.

The crowd groaned. The man next to me said, in English: “He always does that.”

The crowd always was the best part of the experience, as it nearly always is at UAE matches. A visitor, in particular, is unlikely to find so many Emiratis in one place.

This crowd had lots of Emiratis, and if their modest dress was any indication, the rumor we later heard (from the press box) may have been true — that bus loads of spectators had been brought in from the northern emirates.

A full stadium was the key.

After it ended, we hurried off to the metro station — and I suggested to our visitor “you now are having the European soccer experience — see the match, then hurry off to the metro to go home”.

We needed a full hour to make the 18-stop trip back to where we parked (Dubai is a sprawling city), and then it was another 75 minutes of driving to Abu Dhabi.

But that was the only game in town, and when you come to the UAE you must — must — do a soccer game.