Give it up for Al Jazira, homies! The neighborhood team, the scourge of the UAE Pro League.

There we are, still undefeated after 13 matches. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

So, nearly four months into life in Abu Dhabi, I finally got to see the local-local team. That would be Al Jazira, yes, which plays in 40,000-capacity Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium — about 300 yards from where I live. Just past Khalifa University, across Al Saada Street, around the corner past the Civil Defense Building, a few yards up Muroor … and there we are. Our big ol’ stadium!

Finally got the team’s schedule to align with one of my days off. Sheesh. Took forever.

Al Jazira has never won a league championship. They are the Clippers of the UAE Football League. Occasionally decent but often not. And never have won.

But Al Jazira has led every step of the way this season, after finishing second a year ago. This could be the year!

I wanted to see my team, of course. But I also wanted to see what professional soccer looks like in the UAE.

Well, in one word: massively uneven. (OK, two words.)

I am fairly sure any team in Major League Soccer would roll through this league. Mexico’s top team would trash this league, if Al Jazira is the best team they have.

I imagine some European League is inferior to the UAE Pro League, but I’m not sure how far down the food chain you would have to go to find one. Hungary? Belarus? Finland?

The UAE Pro League is an interesting arrangement. A handful of highly paid foreigners, mostly from Brazil. And a whole lot of pretty-well-paid dudes with UAE passports (including guys who have played here long enough to get one, but were born somewhere else).

Al Jazira’s biggest-money guy is a burly forward from Brazil named Ricardo Oliveira, formerly of Spanish club Real Betis. The Jaz picked him up last July in a deal allegedly worth about $19 million. Yes. Serious money. But that is how we role, here in the UAE. Money is no object.

How the economics of the club work, I’m not quite sure, because the match last night was seen by, oh, maybe 3,000 people — most of whom (including me and three co-workers) got in for free.  No admission. You stop to get patted down (unless you’re a woman) at the gate, and then you go up and find a seat in, say, the sixth row.  At midfield.

The pace of the game seemed slow. Before the half, players from both Al Jazira and their middling opponent, Al Dhafra, were doing quite a bit of walking. That could be a function of breathing dirty air the same day as a nasty dust storm. Or maybe these guys are just not in very good shape.

Each side appeared to have 3-4 useful players. And several who didn’t even look like athletes. You know the “eyeball test” coaches talk about? Several of these players wouldn’t pass it. Small or scrawny or awkwardly built or all of that.

One of Al Jazira’s wingers, Salim Rashid, seemed so disinterested in the match, as he mosied up and down the field right in front of us, that it brought to mind the famous description of David Beckham’s 2006 World Cup, when an English journalist wrote, “He appeared to spend the tournament marking the touch line.”

Other guys coasted, too.

Great seats, though. Did I mention that? I haven’t sat that close to pro athletes since seeing the Lakers from the floor-area media seats.

Back to the money. We didn’t pay to get in,  remember. The VIPs sit on the other side of the stadium, and maybe they actually wrote some checks to sit there. But they would have to be really big checks just to pay for Ricardo Oliveira, who is something of an immobile stiff.

I didn’t see a merchandise store, and I would have bought an Al Jazira cap, at the least. And you can’t get concessions (they have stands, inside, but don’t open them) — unless you leave the stadium to buy from the couple of guys standing outside peddling cartons of juice out of a couple of boxes.

The crowd was kinda into it. A big guy behind us kept yelling “choot!” every time Al Jazira had the ball in the attacking half. (Did the English word “shoot” go straight into the Arabic?) We sat near the drum section, a chubby guy banging a big bass drum, and a couple of pals with a kettle drum and a snare. And around them ran a batch of 10-year-old urchins just getting out of the house. (That’s what I don’t get; Al Jazira’s stadium is within a half-mile of thousands of people who can’t be bothered to go see a game — for free?)

The stadium is oddly constructed. I’d guess at least half of the 40,000 seats are behind the two goals. The VIP side has two decks, but the tribune for royals, etc., takes up a lot of space … and the side we were sitting in has only the one deck. Weird.

Anyway, the match. Frustrating. Al Dhafra appeared utterly disinterested the first half hour, and appeared to have no really competent offensive players.

Abdahla Musa, the left outside midfielder for Al Jazira, scored off a corner about 15 minutes into the match, and it looked as if Al Dhafra would just melt away. But Al Jazira failed to convert a few decent opportunities, and then looked as if it shifted into cruise control itself … and Al Dhafra scored a cheesy goal against a defensive mixup, and it was 1-1 at the half.

The visitors from the badlands of the Western Region (where we had been the day before, actually, for the Camel Festival) took the lead at about the 60-minute mark when one of their playmakers hooked a restart, from about 25 yards out, around the Al Jazira wall and into the lower-right corner of the goal, surprising our goalie, Ali Khasif, quite thoroughly. It was what we soccer people call “a bad goal.”

Finally, it was a wake-up call for Al Jazira. Our coach, a dapper Brazilian named Abel Braga, was screaming his head off (the crowd was small enough that we could hear him, from the other side of the field) , and the club finally got moving.

The key guy was midfielder and captain Ibrahim Diaky, who comes from the Ivory Coast but now has a UAE passport. He seemed to be able to get near the top of the box without giving up the ball, and that created lots of chances.  Defensive midfielder Subait Khater was good, too,  tireless when everyone else seemed zapped.

Al Jazira tried to punch through the middle for about a half-hour, focusing on Oliveira, a big sluggish target … but it didn’t work. Finally, in the 86th minute, Diaky let go a shot from the top of the box, and the Al Dhafra goalkeeper seemed screened because he paused for a moment, and Diaky’s shot rolled into the right side of the goal.

Final: 2-2. So, Al Jazira escaped defeat. We were all quite excited. Well, pretty excited.

But we long-time fans are a bit worried, too. We’re undefeated, at 10-0-3, but two of the three ties have come in the last four matches, including a 1-1 tie to Ajman, the worst team in the league, and this 2-2 with Al Dhafra, which is buried in the middle of the pack.

And now comes a huge match with Al Wahda, the crosstown rivals. (Well, not even crosstown. More like “about three blocks away” rivals.)

We play at Al Wahda on Valentine’s Day, with first place at stake, and I don’t like the way we’re playing right now. I just don’t.  Plus, Al Wahda hasn’t lost since November. Eight straight victories. We played them back in October, and beat them 1-0, at Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. I have this bad feeling that if we don’t win that one, Al Wahda is never going to be caught. The pressure is on.

And so much at stake! If we win the league, that means a berth in the Asian Football Confederation Champions League! And a berth in the Club World Cup right here in Abu Dhabi next December! The stakes for us are gi-normous.

(Did I mention I’m going to refer to this team as “we” and “us”? I’ve never done that because I was, well, a professional sports writer, but over here … nope.  I’m just another homer. The Bill Simmons of Al Jazira.)

The club needs help on the right side. And in the back. And Oliveira has eight goals in 13 matches, but watching him play last night, I wonder how that could happen. Maybe Abel Braga needs to find another Brazilian or two.

Anyway,  it was fun. Just being in a stadium, sizing up the teams, seeing the fans, the kids and the drummers and the Al Dhafra fans who thought their team might pull off the big upset …

And I realized I missed it.

I have to work the night of the Showdown with Al Wahda. Maybe I can call in sick? It’s my team, after all. And the Game of the Year.