One of the touted summer signings in UAE soccer was of Jakson Coelho, familiarily known as “Jaja” … a Brazilian attacking midfielder who had been playing in Turkey with Trabzonspor.

Al Ahli, one of the Dubai sides, signed him to a three-year, 4.5 million euro ($5.9 million) deal. That’s real money. The idea was to pair him with Grafite, another Brazilian and a former Bundesliga player of the year, to form a scoring machine for Ahli, an ambitious club with consecutive eighth-place finishes marring their record.

Well, Jaja turned out to be a dud. He is a big guy, but probably shouldn’t be that big — which is to say, he was out of shape.

Also, after a couple of effective games early, he fell apart. He was listless and nearly useless, often walking around the pitch as if he didn’t much care if he saw the ball again. Fans noticed.

After Ahli was thrashed 4-0 last Sunday by Diego Maradona’s Al Wasl in a President’s Cup game … Jaja was the target of fans’ abuse. He apparently went almost directly to the Dubai airport and went home to Brazil.

In so doing, he actually did the team a huge favor.

Note in this first-day story in The National that the CEO of the team is talking about how he expects Jaja to come back and honor his contract.

Which is just plain crazy.

If Jaja went to the airport and flew home without club permission, just a few days ahead of a league match, he almost certainly is in breach of that generous contract — and the club should seize on the opportunity to cut loose a guy who was not getting things done on the field, whose body language was awful, who clearly didn’t want to be here anymore.

That’s what they did. Note in this story for the Thursday editions of The National that the chairman of the club recognized the great upside to Jaja fleeing the premises and, sensibly, says the club will not take him back.

That presumably means the club can save most of that $5.9 million it had promised to Jaja and use it to buy someone, during the January transfer window, who actually wants to come here, get in shape and play hard.

Actually, then, Jaja did Al Ahli a favor when he (as the local expression goes) “did a runner” and fled the country.

That happens. The UAE is not for everyone. Whether expat soccer player or journalists or teachers.  Jaja had played in Spain, in Belgium, in the Ukraine, in Turkey, but there was something about this place that got to him. (Or maybe he had issues at home. Who knows.) And now he’s gone.

This also happened, this Pro League season, with a far better-known player, the former Juventus great and France star forward David Trezeguet, who was signed by Abu Dhabi club Baniyas, showed up hurt, played little and then asked if he could leave — which the club agreed to, after a week or two.

Baniyas picked up a tiny little forward who was just floating around the UAE, out of a contract, who goes by the name of “Tony” … and Tony actually could be useful until the transfer window, when Baniyas can go looking for a bigger star, if it wants to. Now that it isn’t paying Trezeguet.

This business of recruiting foreigners for local clubs … is very tricky but is absolutely critical to a UAE team’s success. Getting it wrong with even one of the four foreigners who teams are allowed to bring in can be fatal. If you screw up with two, you could be looking at relegation, no matter how much history your team has.

Jaja did Ahli a favor. Now let’s see what they do with it.