Theyab Awana became probably the most famous UAE soccer player in history after he scored against Lebanon in July on a backheel penalty.

The goal became an internet sensation. As of tonight, his audacious shot appears to have been viewed more than 10 million times on various YouTube entries, such as this one.

Theyab Awana died in a car crash here in Abu Dhabi late Sunday night. He was 21.

He apparently was driving alone and struck a vehicle on the shoulder of one of the main roads leading into town, hitting the parked vehicle at a high rate of speed.

UAE athletes and car crashes have proved to be a destructive combination. Young guys, fast cars, lots of open and empty freeways, especially late at night …

A youth player for Baniyas, Awana’s Pro League club, had died in an accident only two days before.

Just over a year ago, a kid who might now be the national team goalkeeper (and certainly the Olympic team goalkeeper), almost died when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel on a long and boring drive from the Indian Ocean city of Kalba to his club in Al Ain.

I did a story on him in December, when he had returned to the team but was nowhere near ready to play.

Theyab Awana, of course, was more famous than the goalkeeper and, as we stipulated, more famous (outside the country, anyway) than any UAE player ever.

The outpouring of grief was quick and intense. UAE soccer fans had seen him play just last week, when the UAE Olympic team took a point from Australia, in Adelaide, in pool play for the 2012 London Olympics. The Olympic team is the big national soccer hope here, since the national team is unlikely to reach the final round of World Cup qualifying.

But Awana also had broken in to the national team, for whom he scored the infamous backheel penalty, and probably would have been a regular starter the past year if not for a series of injuries that kept him out of most of the major internationals played here.

Some links.

Here is the basic news story on his death and funeral. Muslims, like Jews, prefer to have burials within 24 hours of death, so Awana’s funeral was conducted at 4 p.m. today.

I did a profile on the kid, trying to get a sense of who he was and what he was really about, aside from the backheel penalty. Emirati players tend to cling to their privacy, not often doing interviews, and The National had never done a feature-length story on him. My sense, after talking to several sources, was that he was naive and a young 21, and had no idea that many of those who saw his backheel PK would consider it poor sportsmanship.

My sports colleague, Amith Passela, went to the funeral and found some players and coaches close to Theyab Awana, and filed this reaction story.

And our columnist, Chuck Culpepper, did a piece on the shock of athletes dying young, noting that most of us probably think less about death while watching sports than at any other time … and how it almost always smacks us in the face when one of them suddenly is no longer here.

I remembered that I was one of perhaps 50 people in a big stadium in Al Ain when Awana scored his famous goal. It was a classic “what the …?” moment. It caused quite a stir, and the coach yanked him two minutes after the shot, and said he felt it was poor sportsmanship, since the UAE already was leading Lebanon 6-2.

(It should be noted that when Lebanon shocked the UAE 3-1 in World Cup qualifying back on September 6, the English-language newspaper in Beirut declared “revenge” for the humiliation Lebanon suffered via Awana’s goal. Turns out, though, that Awana was hurt and didn’t play in that game.)

So, we are left with the cosmic question of … is it better to have made that shot, perhaps the first of its kind in international soccer, and possibly be remembered for poor sportsmanship? … or would it have been better to just play it straight, like millions of players before you … if you knew you were going to die at age 21, not even three months later?

Comes back to how you want to be remembered. And if you don’t mind how you are remembered — so long as you are — then Theyab Awana did the right thing.  Someone is going to be looking at his PK every day for a very long time.