The most genuine of UAE sports events is a domestic football match. Perhaps the national team is a bigger deal than the upper-tier clubs … but not always.

Especially when it is a leading rivalry, like Al Jazira home to Al Wahda, Abu Dhabi rivals whose stadiums are about three miles apart.

When opportunities like that present themselves when a visitor is in town, I always recommend going. Nearly everything about the experience is informative for someone new to the city or country. And an 8:30 start on a cool night … all the better.

And that is how we came to see Jazira and Wahda play a 4-4 tie.

To recap some of the upsides of seeing soccer here:

–If you are in one of the country’s four biggest cities (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Al Ain), odds are good a team will be playing a home match during any particular week of the September-to-May season.

–No admission is charged. You just walk up and go inside, and pick out a seat, and generally it is a very good one, because crowds rarely exceed 3,000 and stadium capacities tend to be around 10,000 — aside from Jazira’s home stadium, which holds up to 40,000.

–The level of play is not bad, especially during the non-torrid months. Premier League fans, or fans of Barcelona or Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, are likely to look down their noses at matches here, but each UAE team has four expatriates, usually in attacking positions, and they often are very good. And when a local team has three or four members of the national team in uniform, they and the foreigners can make for a decent side. (I found it interesting that Al Shabab, a solid but unspectacular side, defeated FC Dallas 1-0 in a friendly in Dubai last month.)

–And local soccer really is the core affiliation of any Emirati sports fan. Every adult male, certainly, will have a favored local team. He may not attend matches past the age of about 25 (in fact, he almost certainly does not go, unless he is sitting in a VIP section comfy chair), but an allegiance remains.

So, we arrived 20 minutes before kickoff, parked next to the practice field, walked about 150 yards to the press-box side of the stadium, and were pointed to an entrance near the other end of the field, designated as a “family” section, for which we were eligible because our visitor is female.

We sat in about the 10th row of the lowest level, just past the end of the visiting team dugout. Great seats, that is. And the crowd was decent — a rivalry game, after all — and almost uniformly young Emirati males formed up into two groups, with organized chants and percussion sections.

A very UAE experience, that is.

The game was not dull, in part because both sides were horrible on defense. Jazira’s excuse was that it was its fourth game in 11 days (having played twice in the Asian Champions League during that stretch), and Wahda’s excuse was it hadn’t played at all in three weeks.

Jazira had a 3-0 lead at the half, and it looked as if it would be a non-contest, but Wahda got two goals in the first 20 minutes of the second half, and the half-dozen random Wahda fans (who for some reason had gotten into the “family” section one row in front of us), were quite pleased.

Jazira took it back up to 4-2 when their Ecuadoran forward, a former Manchester City player who came on as a substitute, scored a sloppy goal in the 69th minute, and that seemed to be that.

But Jazira fell apart, perhaps from fatigue, perhaps because a key defensive player was suspended for the game, perhaps because in the four seasons I have watched them play they have always been prone to cheap goals.

Wahda’s Argentine forward, who played the previous four seasons for a couple of good Saudi clubs, made it a 4-3 game by tapping in a cross that had deflected off a couple of people.

And in the second minute of added time, Wahda’s left back, Eisa Ahmed, lofted in a cross from the left side, and Jazira’s goalkeeper, Ali Kasheif, came off his line to handle it … but badly misjudged the ball. It certainly was meant to be a pass, but it failed to curl much and sailed … into the far side of the goal.

A 4-4 final. Wahda pleased. Jazira annoyed, because they are third in the table and had hoped to move up.

Our visitor said she was very pleased with the spectacle. “If I lived here, I would come all the time,” she said.

She had become a Wahda fan on the spot, at first because she “felt bad for them”, but by the end because she liked their central defender, Hamdan Al Kamali.

Also, the cultural exposure was informative. Watching the chants and the reactions of fans … taking a long look at soccer in the UAE (yes, they dive a lot) … trying to figure out what was going on with 20 college-age Jazira fans, in Western dress, who came to the match wearing enormous red-white-and-black wigs (Jazira colors).

(If I didn’t know better, I would have said they were fraternity brothers, but I’m fairly sure colleges here don’t have fraternities.)

And the female in a male place issue, when looking for a women’s restroom. Not available on that side of the field. She had gone out looking, gave up, and came back in, and a female member of the Abu Dhabi police, on station to examine the purses of the handful of women who came to the stadium, asked her if she had found a restroom. She said no, she had not, and the female cop then led her into the VIP entry, where a bathroom was found. Which was a nice gesture.

And eight goals! I suggested it would take about four Premier League games to generate that many, not knowing that Chelsea had blitzed Arsenal 6-0 earlier in the day or that Liverpool routed Cardiff City 6-3 or that Manchester City had crushed Fulham 5-0.

So, the UAE’s league has one more fan. Though when she will be around to see another game … not at all sure.