I recognize I am not a soccer purist. For one, I still call it “soccer” after nearly a full year working in the sports department of a British-English newspaper, where it is “football” and what Yanks call football is American football.

So.

At the end of the shift today, I made the 10-minute walk down to see the neighborhood team play at The Big Stadium, and it was about as much fun as I’ve had watching a game here. Or anywhere.

I concede to not being a fully polished fan because I ought to find 5-3 repellant. (Though scores of that sort were common, a half-century ago. Check the 1954 World Cup, where Hungary scored 27 goals in five matches and lost 3-2 in the final to West Germany despite taking a 2-0 lead.)

Believing eight goals (seven in the second half) is fun shows what little I know about the game. Though it does strike me that if professional soccer clubs averaged eight goals per match, it would be a far easier sell to U.S. sports fans who will never quite get the appeal of a 0-0 tactical draw … and I still don’t, after watching hundreds of professional and international games all over the world.

Anyway, it was a shootout. In the basketball sense. Lots of goals.

Best team in the league, Al Jazira, which plays about 400 yards from where I’m sitting, against the worst team, Al Dhafra.

Dhafra played with five defenders and tried to lure Jazira forward (as if that is ever difficult) and then counterattack, and for about 50 minutes it worked like a charm as Dhafra caught Jazira up field and took a 2-0 lead on goals by Boris Kabi, Dhafra’s best player.

This is a seriously hot night, maybe 95 at kickoff, and I didn’t know if Jazira had the energy to come back. The end of their 24-game Pro League unbeaten streak, which goes back to Valentine’s Day, 2010, was at risk. My colleague, Amith Passela, who was covering the game, was getting ready for that eventuality.

And then Jazira went off.  The team’s coach, a Brazilian named Abel Braga, wants to come forward at all time, and after seeing 45 minutes of Dhafra bunkering in with five defenders, he made a halftime change, taking off one of his midfielders for a fourth forward, and soon enough it was rainin’ goals.

First came Bare Volnei, the Brazilian. Followed by Juma Abdullah, who is one of the more offense-oriented central defenders in the world.  Then came Abdullah Mousa, the goofball outside back I wrote about a few weeks ago, and then Ricardo Oliveira, the team’s other Brazilian, and the finale, by the backup forward Ali Mabhkout.

Oh, and in there, between Jazira’s third and fourth goals, was one by Dhafra to tie the score for a moment.

So, yeah, call me a non-serious soccer observer, but I left thinking, “What’s wrong with eight goals, again? How should I be disgusted by this?”

Because I wasn’t it. I liked it. A lot. And Jazira’s league unbeaten streak is now at 25. No UAE top-flight champion ever has gone through a season unbeaten, and they’re five matches away from becoming the first.