When you cover an event, as a journalist, your point of reference is the team you are following. Even in defeat. Well, of course. The default intellectual setting for fans as well as writers is not “their team won, and why” … it is “our team lost, and how come?”

When the UAE lost 3-1 to Lebanon in a 2014 World Cup qualifier back in September, a game I traveled to Beirut to cover, I focused 99 percent of  my attention on what had gone wrong with the UAE — because that is where my newspaper and my readers are. Well, and because losing to Lebanon was, at the time, pretty much inexcusable.

What Lebanon did or didn’t do that night, beyond the crazy logistics I wrote about … didn’t matter much. What mattered was the UAE losing a match it had to win … and the Football Association firing the coach that night.

Lebanon, however, turned out to be more than a 90-minute wonder. Their national team went on to defeat both Kuwait and South Korea, which is one of the heavyweights of Asia, and also tie Kuwait, and on the day before the final round of matches in the second-to-last round of qualifying, Lebanon has 10 points, like the Koreans, at the top of the group.

On the day they shocked the UAE, in September, Lebanese football was close to dead. They had lost to South Korea 6-0 four days before. Then they beat the Emiratis, and the results began coming … and that story led me to spend a lot of time thinking about Lebanon, ahead of their return match with the UAE here tomorrow.

What fascinated me was the concept of one match, one span of 90 minutes, killing one country’s not-unrealistic dreams … and reviving those of another, who had pretty much stopped dreaming at all.

I was determined to write about that for The National, with the Lebanese here in Abu Dhabi.

I was allowed to churn out nearly 1,000 words on the topic — September 6 as a turning point for two nations’ teams, and the story was mostly about Lebanon.

Some Lebanon soccer facts:

–In April of last year, Lebanon was ranked No 187 in the world by Fifa, the lowest ranking for a Lebanon team. At 187, you’re down there with city states and island republics in the no-hope realm. At 187, you aspire to be as good as a banana republic.

–In July of last year, Lebanon played a friendly here in the UAE, and the home team won 7-2. That was the game of the infamous backheel penalty shot by Theyab Awana, which I wrote about here. That blog post has a link to the video, but here it is again. Anyway, Lebanese football that night … was a joke. They were punching bags. This was seven months ago.

–In Lebanon football history, they had never reached the final round of Asia qualifying for a World Cup. In September, there was zero reason to believe they would change that any time soon.

–Lebanon is a mess. Sectarian strife, UN troops on the streets of Beirut, an economy not in very good shape. And that is reflected in the soccer realm; until last October, fans had not been able to attend club matches since 2005 for fear of crowds attracting violence. True story. No spectators for six-plus years.

–When Lebanon played the UAE in September, about 4,000 people turned out, and officials seemed to be happy with that crowd. At the next home match, however, attendance jumped to 32,000. And when they played the Koreans in November, the stadium was filled with 38,000 people.

At a pre-match press conference today, the German who coaches Lebanon, Theo Bucker, talked about how far behind the UAE, in football, Lebanon is. And he mentioned that Al Jazira’s practice field, which he and his players had seen the night before, was nicer than any field in Lebanon.  Not Jazira’s game pitch … their practice pitch.

I brought all this up and more, including comment from reporters at The Daily Star, Beirut’s leading English-language newspaper, who have marveled at the ride the Lebanese team has been on.

And I had lots of material from Bucker, the voluble little German, who, yes, is selling his team and perhaps burnishing his own reputation a little, having led Lebanon to so many victories with a federation that has no money … but he’s an interesting guy, and what he says is true.

The Lebanese were dead in the water. As he put, Lebanon “was a blank spot on the map of world football.”

And now they’re on the verge of reaching the final 10 of Asia qualifying for Brazil 2014, and four of those 10 will go to Brazil, and two more will have a shot at playoffs that set up another playoff — to get a potential fifth spot for Asia.

It’s a heck of a story. I certainly liked it, which is why I wrote it.