An odd day, and not just because it was Leap Year Day.

The UAE swamped Lebanon in a World Cup qualifier, and 10,000 Lebanese fans went home more or less unhappy, even though the UAE defeating Lebanon should be a “dog bites man” event — which is to say, vaguely interesting, depending on the size of the dog, but not really news.

That is what comes of the UAE collapsing in this round of qualifying and the Lebanese surging, and then expectations get turned upside down until the UAE is pouring in four goals in a home game, and you feel rather foolish for having assumed Lebanon would win.

Let’s begin with the oddest of sights.

That would be the 10,000 Lebanese going to Al Wahda’s Al Nahyan Stadium in central Abu Dhabi.

Wahda hasn’t had that many people inside its grounds in a year or two, now, and the last time it did (for a game with Al Jazira, perhaps?) they certainly didn’t come draped and covered and clad and waving the red-and-white-with-cedar-tree colors of Lebanon. That flag has always fascinated me, because every Arab country celebrates green, perhaps in the hope they might find some inside their borders, but Lebanon goes all the way to the tree, because it has actual forests, pretty much alone in the Arab world.

So. I had established the day before that 8,000 Lebanese, at a minimum were coming to the match, at which they could win their way into the final round of Asia qualifying for Brazil 2014. And with kickoff scheduled for 4 p.m., an extra 8,000 people looking to park in the Wahda neighborhood, right behind a major mall and a new and massive hotel (the Metropolitan) … it was going to snarl traffic.

My cabbie could get no closer than a quarter-mile of the entrance, and then I followed the Lebanese fans to the stadium.

They stand out in the UAE because, unlike the Gulf Arabs, they wear “western” clothes, and because their women often are dressed provocatively (remember: by UAE standards), and they always seem to want to be the hippest Arabs in the room, and they embrace it. Very few Arabs seem to lift weights, for instance, but lots and lots of young Lebanese guys appear to, and they stand out in a place like this, with their muscle shirts and fashion-conscious wives and daughters.

The UAE, like most of the Middle East … well, heck, like almost any country with money, has lots of Lebanese expats. According to their embassy here, 100,000 Lebanese live in the UAE (a total greater than for any European country), and 30,000 of them live in Abu Dhabi, and (it turns out) 10,000 (!) of them were going to make their way into the stadium.

The UAE takes quite seriously the segregation of fans in stadiums, though I’m not sure the country has ever had any serious soccer violence.

With the Lebanese arriving in huge numbers, they were carefully channeled/crammed into half of the stadium, so as not to risk mingling with the Emiratis — as if anyone there was going to descend into fisticuffs, or something.

The UAE had scraped up perhaps two dozen guys in robes, as fans, by kickoff, but they had a reasonable excuse: their team had not managed even a tie in this round, and this is a front-running country that, conversely, hated being associated with sporting failure.

Before kickoff, what seemed to be the entire Lebanese chamber of commerce here in the UAE (or maybe they were businessmen in for the day from Beirut) took over the VIP section on the north side of stadium, including the media area. And I was surrounded by guys wearing expensive suits and bulky watches who somehow had wangled “press” passes but were fans, pure and simple.

One of the local Arab reporters arrived in the press area before the match, which is to say “early” for him … and the businessmen had already taken every spot in or near the press area, and he actually got into arguments with the Lebanese burgers, who had no intention of moving (which I’m sure he was demanding), and I don’t even know where in the stadium that guy ended up.

As usual, the internet didn’t work, and my “dongle” crashed, too, which kept me from tweeting, and I also realized I had left my power cord at home, and I felt like a sardine in a can in the crush of the “press” area … but other than that, things were fine.

Then came the match, which went 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2 in the first half, with the UAE holding the leads and the Lebanese looking more than a little tight. We also should entertain the notion that they just aren’t very good, because they never had been before and these were the same guys who couldn’t beat anyone.

Lebanon was in position to move ahead even with a defeat if South Korea beat Kuwait, in Seoul, which kicked off at the same time. But at halftime the 10,000 jammed into the western half of the stadium were nervous, because it was 2-2 in Abu Dhabi and 0-0 in Seoul.

In the second half, South Korea scored, and the Lebanese around me cheered, but a moment later the UAE scored, and the idea that they were going to lose seemed to depress everyone. A few minutes later Korea scored again, and Lebanese guys were holding up two fingers to signal to those without PDAs that Kuwait were safely buried. Which was good, because the UAE scored again, and it was 4-2.

So, even though Lebanon was about to get into the final 10 in Asian qualifying, thanks to Kuwait losing, once it got to 4-2 in Abu Dhabi … thousands of the Lebanese began streaming out of the stadium. One might think they would stick around to applaud their players, who over the course of six months had done so much better than anyone expected (most certainly including their compatriots), winning three, drawing one, losing two … but very few of them did.

When the match was over, both sides celebrated. Kinda. It seemed as if no one was quite sure what to do. The UAE team ran over in front of their 100 fans who eventually had gathered, and waved, and the fans sorta cheered (they hadn’t forgotten those five defeats yet) … and the Lebanese team moped around for a bit, till one guy picked up a big flag and ran over to the clot of fans still in the park, and they cheered them because, heck, even if they’d just lost they’re in the Asia final 10, which for Lebanon is huge.

That was odd, and awkward, and then so was the writing I did.

Like the 10,000 Lebanese, I had arrived at the match expecting Lebanon to win, giving more weight to recent results than historical realities. In fact, I was the only reporter there for The National, and we had decided not to do a traditional game story, because the dreary specifics of another defeat were not necessary … just a color/comment piece from me … and the UAE victory knocked me off-balance, because clearly I needed to write about the local side.

The UAE won, handily, with a team that did not include anything like the nation’s best 11 guys.

Five or six of them are off in Turkey training with the Olympic team, which won so spectacularly the week before and are on the verge of going to the London Olympics, and a few other other guys were hurt or injured or found excuses not to be there, and the guys who paddled Lebanon included a half-dozen who normally would never get on the field.

The Lebanon coach suggested his team had been 1) overconfident and 2) had fully expected South Korea to beat Kuwait (which they did), rendering our game irrelevant, aside from the 10,000 Lebanese who lost the will to celebrate.

The UAE coach, an interim guy who replaced the crabby Slovenian Srecko Katanec after the UAE lost to Kuwait and Lebanon in the span of five days back in September, said it was nice to leave the competition with “something in our hands” — meaning this win here at the end.

My laptop was nearly dead, so I searched out a cab from among the crowds of can’t-decide-how-we-should-act Lebanese,  and the roads around the stadium were clogged, still, an hour after the game, and my cabbie remarked upon the surge of traffic all day, which had confounded and frustrated him.

I stared at this very screen for something like two hours, after banging out a game story for the web, followed by my comment piece, which I labored over … and if it were not a mild case of writer’s block, it was in the territory.

Struggling to write 750 words … that’s rare for me, outside maybe after a Super Bowl, where “nothing remains to be said” after a week of buildup. In this case, it was unexpected, and the angle I had dreamed up (which I liked, and still like, but not after a 4-2 win) … wasn’t going to work.

Turned out, our best art from the day came out of the match, and the story we weren’t really interested in the night before ended up on the cover of the section, and we dredged up two pages of coverage inside (including a roundup of coverage in Asia — Saudi Arabia, out!) … and maybe it was all about generic Leap Year’s Day weirdness.

Or maybe I’ve just been looking at too much UAE football of late, and I need a bit of a break.