The UAE football team that won in Tashkent and clinched a place in the 2012 London Olympics …

The president of the country, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, today awarded each player with 500,000 dirhams. Which converts to $136,000.

Which is real money for winning a match you already really wanted to win.

Let’s do some arithmetic. If we low-ball the number of players who were awarded $136,000 each (from Sheikh Khalifa’s personal fortune, far as I know) … and go with 18 players (11 starters, seven on the bench, in Tashkent), that’s almost $2.5 million that he handed out to players at one of his palaces, here in Abu Dhabi.

But I would guess the award went deeper than 18 players and included players who had prominent rolls in the qualifying process, only to fall hurt or out of favor. The awards easily could have gone to 25 guys … and do the coaches get some love, too? I’d think so.

I did a story on this for The National. You can see that here.

We caught wind of this around 7 p.m., in a news release from the government news agency, and we talked to a player and to a local pundit, and they each thought the cash awards were fine ideas.

One even suggested that in the context of, say, top European footballers, that it wasn’t all that much money.

(Carlos Tevez, for instance, is known to be making $316,000 per week to play, very occasionally, for Manchester City.)

So, if these guys win a match or two at the London Olympics?

I expect the players can expect another visit to Sheikh Kahlifa’s palace, and another healthy bonus.