This never was going to be easy but until the Asian Football Confederation draw for the final round of qualifying earlier this week … it didn’t seem quite so daunting.

Two groups of six with the top two in each group — following a 10-match home-and-away, round-robin competition — securing a place at Russia 2018.

And the two third-place teams going to a playoff with the survivor getting another home-and-road duel with another federation’s fourth- or fifth-place side.

What does this mean for the UAE, the team I watched for more than five years?

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Well, that was an NBA regular season that ended with a bang. The Golden State Warriors recorded an unprecedented 73rd victory, but somehow it seemed less astonishing than Kobe Bryant ending his 20-year Lakers career by scoring 60.

60!

Kobe spent much of the season struggling to be something more than a subpar player who a really bad team had decided to indulge. His shooting percentage cratered, and a case could be made the Lakers were better when he didn’t play.

And then he pours in 60.

No, the Utah Jazz were playing for nothing but pride (and apparently not much of it) but, still, 60 by the 37-year-old man? On 50 shots?

Go to the video, if you did not see the game — all 60 points are there, including free throws.
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Some stories I have read in the past few days, stories you also might like.

Let’s start with this one: In late 2001, Major League Soccer was essentially dead for several hours, after only six seasons and lots of red ink.

Who saved it? The story suggests Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL and a long-time soccer booster, was the key man. But we should not forget the tenacity of Phil Anschutz, who owned six of the 10 teams who survived to play the 2002 season, including the Galaxy and the Columbus Crew, who had the league’s only soccer-specific stadium.

The suggestion is that the U.S. national team’s surprise run to the World Cup quarterfinals in the summer of 2002 proved to be the turning point for MLS, which now operates 20 teams.

On another topic, we hear from a veteran journalist who expresses his amazement that modern tech companies can be openly “age-ist” and get away with it.

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It seems only a few weeks ago that the Languedoc was mostly brown. A fecund brown, it looked, but one paused while it waited for more light and warmth.

The thousands and thousands of vines were still dormant, in their rows and rows, earthy furrows dug out between many of them. Naked and slumbering trees waited yet for a new suit of leaves.

And now this.

A few days in the 60s, a couple of days of soft, persistent rain, and the countryside has exploded.

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In 2007, in a previous life, I wrote an opinion piece, on the second Sunday of April, about how Zach Johnson was not the right guy to win the Masters.

My suggestion was that a Masters champion needs to be someone already famous. It was not a place for a guy to make a breakthrough; that just seemed weird.

This is not the PGA Championship, where out-of-the-blue winners are expected. This is the Masters. Your fame should precede you.

Yet there was Zach Johnson, the last man standing, one shot over par (the worst winning score at Augusta National since Jack Burke Jr. also registered a 289, in 1956).

Johnson’s only previous PGA victory had been in the Bell South tournament in 2004 — which I deemed a resume too thin to wear a green jacket.

And I thought about Zach Johnson today, when Danny Willett won the 2016 Masters.

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The Golden State Warriors play the San Antonio Spurs tomorrow night in San Antonio. This is a big game. The question is … how big?

The Warriors have won 71 games and have two to play. The record for victories in a season is 72, by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

If the Warriors defeat the Spurs on Sunday night, they will at least tie the record for victories in a season.

If the Spurs win, they will improve their home record to 40-0, putting them in position to become the first NBA team to complete the regular season with a perfect 41-0 mark at home.

So, is this the most significant regular-season NBA game in the history of the league?

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Manny Pacquiao says his third go-round with Timothy Bradley, at the MGM Grand tomorrow night, will be his last fight.

It pretty much is time for the Filipino fighter, 37, to go, though a re-run of a re-run with a middling opponent is not exactly a Fight of the Century Part Dieu exit from the stage.

And there’s this: Pacquiao is the kind of up-from-the-depths boxer, long on toughness but short on education, who seems unable to hang on to his money. Thus, do not rule him out as a serial “making a comeback” guy.

Muhammad Ali made a second career out of retiring and coming back, and given his physical challenges over the past 25 years, he probably should have stayed away after the first (or second or third) time he retired.

At my former newspaper, The National, editors are keenly aware that Pacquiao is Topic 1 for Filipino fans, and the UAE has about 500,000 natives of the Philippines living and working there.

So, the coverage has been thorough, just how we like it, and here are three pieces worth reading, from The National’s leading boxing authorities.

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Well, it’s good news in my view of the world, anyway.

We don’t have to be negative all the time, do we? Let’s do a list to celebrate some of the uplifting or inspirational or remarkable.

For one day, anyway.

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These must be hard times for baseball fans in the greater Los Angeles area.

The Dodgers have a chance to be good, but they cannot be seen by most fans. (Because of that ridiculous Time Warner Cable mess.)

The Angels can be seen by almost all fans, but no one should have to watch them.

The Angels just got spanked twice by the Chicago Cubs — and, yes, the Cubs are pretty good — but the Angels’ shaky pitching (Garrett Richards and Andrew Heaney are their top two starters, and were battered) is alarming, and we already knew that the lineup is quite weak.

This doesn’t look good at all, not even when we take into account the “marathon, not a sprint” thing.

Do Angels fans actually believe that the half of their lineup that has no punch, and never has … suddenly will discover it? Do they imagine the club is going to come up with five MLB-caliber starting pitchers at any point this season, especially now that Heaney is down with a scary arm injury?

What is particularly depressing about this team is the amount of money being lavished on it, for no foreseeable benefit.

Let’s look at how that $166.8 million Opening Day salary bill, the seventh-biggest in baseball, is being apportioned.

Hold on!

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One of those “things I came across while looking for something else” moments.

The Guardian, my preferred site for news and soccer from a British publication, has posted a long story about diving — and when it became “football’s worst crime”.

And along in there the 1990 World Cup came up, a tournament played in a wonderful, friendly, culture-suffused country (Italy) where simply walking the streets was an education … but a country stuck with what is widely considered the dullest World Cup — as well as the worst World Cup final.

And the author described a key moment in that game — when the Argentine defender Roberto Sensini was deemed to have fouled Germany’s Rudi Voller in the box, sending Andreas Brehme to the spot, where he booted home the game’s only goal. Yes, a penalty decided the World Cup, in the 85th minute.

The author, in passing, talks about how Voller’s tumble to the ground was convincing but not hysterical — as opposed to the over-the-top and acrobatic German tumble taken in the 65th minute, one that led to a red card shown to Argentina’s Pedro Monzon … due to the imagination of none other than …

Jurgen Klinsmann.

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