To work in a British-English newsroom, like The National, is to regularly hear expressions unknown in the United States.

One of the handier is “minus-one,” used when referring to media activities on the eve of a match. That is, it’s about the match, but “minus-one” day on the calendar.

It is when coaches come out of their lairs and sometimes a player is allowed to brave the inquisition by the media. For perhaps two questions, anyway.

This was the minus-one day for the UAE and Uzbekistan, who play in Tashkent tomorrow for a London 2012 Olympics soccer berth. Neither country has played in an Olympic football tournament, and making the grade would be huge.

What did we learn, on “minus-one”?

The UAE delegation seems to believe (perhaps “hope” would be more accurate) that a 10-day camp in Turkey will prepare them for the weather here in Tashkent.

It’s not that it’s snowing. Nor will it. But the chance of rain tomorrow is 90 percent, and the UAE rarely plays on a wet field. It also might be less than 40 degrees (4 degrees Celsius) at kickoff, which is at 6 p.m. (dusk, that is) in Tashkent.

It will not be UAE-level warm, that is for certain.

An Austrian who coaches at the Al Wahda club in the UAE told me this week that Emirati players believe it is “very, very cold” when the temperature gets to 10 Celsius — or 50 Fahrenheit. That might seem extreme, even in sunny Southern California, but the record low in Dubai is 44F. This is in the history of the city. Never been colder. Ever. In Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s other big city, the record low is about 40F.

These guys don’t play when it’s cold. They can go forever in potentially lethal heat, but they don’t do cold … and they don’t do wet. Or very rarely do. But they will have to here.

An example from this year: The UAE senior national team played India in a World Cup qualifier in India, and it rained throughout the match. Albeit a warm rain. The India team that the UAE had handled with ease, 3-0, in the UAE a few days before, finished 2-2 in the mud.

(Also, the Asian Football Confederation is made up mostly of countries not far from the equator. Get out your globe. Arabia, the subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Philippines … those are all places that don’t really get cold. Japan, Korea, China, it can be cold there, but the way events here are scheduled, the teams from the warm countries rarely get games in the cold countries — during winter. It just doesn’t happen much.)

Uzbekistan, meanwhile, through its oh-so-bored/droll coach Vadim Abramov, who usually speaks in Russian, said he was not interested in the weather, which I didn’t for one moment believe. The Russians talk about General Winter when they are at war, and General Winter to Emiratis would be 1) a wet field or 2) temps of 45 or less.

The problem with “minus-ones” in situations like this, is that the 15 minutes allotted to each side is about half what it would be for most club matches. For one obvious reason: Everything must be translated, and that makes every pronouncement twice as long.

I asked questions in English of the UAE coach, and he is an Emirati, but his English is easily good enough to answer me in English. (Also, not a single Arabic reporter was at the event, which seemed curious.)

However, the moderator, a press officer with the Uzbek Football Federation, then had to translate both my question and Mahdi Ali’s answer into Uzbek.

When the Russian/Uzbek coach was at the podium, everything he said had to be translated into English.

(Thankfully, Uzbeks and Russians generally understand each other, or so I am told. If that had not been the case, the Uzbek coach, speaking in Russian, would have had to be translated twice. Into Russian and then into English.)

The stadium for this momentous clash is fairly small (10,000 capacity), but it appears to be fairly new and in good condition — plastic seats instead of benches for fans, decent infrastructure inside (interview room, changing rooms, etc.). Sadly, however, I learned that the “press tribune” (the press “box” is mostly an American term) is not enclosed.

Hence, reporters will be sitting outside. We will have a table and power and a wifi hookup, the press officer alleged, but no, we will not be inside some heated room, which had been my fondest wish.

I made two trips to the stadium, the first for the “minus-one” activities, and the second to pick up my credential. Each time, I was ferried by gypsy cabs — well, basically, any local guy the bellman of the hotel could dragoon.

One of the great questions asked of foreigners in a new city is, “How much will you pay?” when dickering with an off-the-books “taxi” driver. What do you say to that? “All my money!” Or “one dollar and not a cent more!”

I realize that they are trying to figure out the bartering range, but I have never been to Tashkent, and I don’t know what is a high price or a low price. I said to the bellman, “What does he want?” The answer came back: “8,000 som” — which sounds scary until you remember that the som (the local currency) trades for about 1,850 to the dollar. So 8,000 som is a bit over $4.

I said, “Sure.”

The rest of the day, I was cooped up in the room, writing.

This is my main story, outlining what is at stake. We cannot overestimate how big this is in the UAE.

Here is a sidebar I did on Hamdan Al Kamali, who was exiled from the national U23 (Olympic) team while he was forcing Al Wahda to loan him to Lyon, a strong French club. He was left out of the team entirely for a game a month ago, and then sat on the bench for the win over Australia. It was a bit of a shock to see him enter the interview room today, because the captain is usually the player brought along, and Al Kamali is now, again, the captain.

And this is a think piece that I bled over, about how the coach came this close to the World Cup in 1990, and doesn’t want to miss the opportunity to get to a major global competition — by leading the UAE to the Summer Olympics.

I like Mahdi Ali. He is polite but no-nonsense, yet he also will say provocative things. Such as before the Australia game, in Abu Dhabi, when he essentially called out the Emirati population to come to the stadium, and 28,000 of them did. And afterward, he said that the whole second half he was nervous about winning — so as to not disappoint all those fans.

The thing about writing about the same team … and writing a lot … is that you begin to run out of ideas. Anyone who has covered a Super Bowl knows what I am talking about. During the course of a week, you write every angle worthy of note — and some that are not.

And then when they play the game, and it’s over, you sit in front of your laptop … and often find you have nothing to say, and decide you hate what you have written.

That familiar feeling struck me in an unfamiliar place. In Tashkent. On the Silk Road. Not far from fabled Samarkand. Where it is nearly freezing “minus-one” before the biggest match the UAE has played in, arguably, 22 years.