Corey Seager is the Next Big Thing for the Dodgers. Or could be. He has been talked about for a few years now … pretty much as soon as the Dodgers made him the 18th pick in the 2012 draft and gave him a $2.5 million signing bonus.

The Dodgers would seem to suggest they believe the tall, 21-year-old shortstop is going to be someone who has a significant career … and they demonstrated it by giving him No. 5.

Typically, when a kid makes a major-league debut, he gets some random number in the 20-and-up range. And maybe in the 40-and-up range, if he is a pitcher.

Baseball fans pretty much expect a No. 5 to be a real player. Single digits, and all.

No. 5 is the lowest number you can wear, on the Dodgers, aside from No 3. Nos. 1 (Peewee Reese), 2 (Tommy Lasorda) and 4 (Duke Snider) are retired.

Turns out, though, that 5 is not a particularly distinguished number, in Dodgers history.

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The European Champions League is a very big deal in most of the world. Especially once we get down to the group stage, which boasts 32 of the best club teams in Europe — which generally means 32 of the best teams in the world.

We at The National hold deadline an additional 90 minutes, to 1:30 a.m., to get the Champions League results into the newspaper. These being eight games on six sets of Tuesdays and Wednesdays — with the first Tuesday-Wednesday set this week.

The late deadline is necessary because all eight of the games begin at 10:45 p.m. UAE time (7:45 England time, 8:45 European time) — aside from the handful played in Russia.

And this, to me, someone who grew up watching American football spread its footprint up and down (in the hours of the day) and left and right (in the days of the week), seems like a very big missed opportunity.

When you have a product with so much value … why do you have eight games kicking off at the same time?

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A visitor driving the streets of any UAE city over the past week may puzzle over the large, rectangular photos of Emiratis along the sides of major roads.

The signs invariably picture an Emirati man or woman in national dress, with a few lines Arabic script below the photo and a three-digit number. And, sometimes, a phone number or two, as well.

These are not ads for kanduras or abayas … nor are they marketing tools for radio or TV personalities …

Those are would-be members of the UAE’s elected “parliament” — the Federal National Council, or FNC.

Elections are coming up on October 3 for the 20 FNC seats voted on by the country’s citizens — Emiratis — and the roadside signs may be the most effective campaign tools for the 329 candidates. They certainly are the most visible.

And the three-digit number serves as a reference for voters to search on the internet and find out the issues important to that candidate.

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It is tempting to say that little Mohammed Khaled is the first kid on his block to have a Bentley, but given the mania for cars in the UAE, that’s an assumption we can’t make.

It is fair to suggest he will have the longest wait to get behind the wheel of the new Bentley GT V8 Coupe, sticker price about $200,000, which he won in a monthly raffle held by a local bank.

Mohammed Khaled is 8 and the legal driving age in the UAE apparently is still 18 … so the Bentley will have a few miles on it, a decade from now, when our lucky kid can drive it.

Turns out, the UAE is crazy about raffles. To examine The National’s website is to find a long history of big prizes being handed out, generally by businesses looking for customers as well as some media recognition, when the prize is given.

Some others:

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Jorge Valdivia is known for being … a bit controversial. Arguments with soccer authorities, rumors about off-the-field issues …

But he usually overcomes any of that with his football skills, which are advanced. Al Ain fans still get a bit rapturous when recalling his two-season stay with the team from 2008 to 10.

Fans in Chile, Valdivia’s homeland, can feel the same way — when he is not frustrating them.

Valdivia returned to the UAE this summer, signing with the Abu Dhabi club Al Wahda, and in his first match he had a rough time as visitors Al Shabab seemed to target him in a less-than-friendly way.

He was picking himself off the ground a lot.

He also caught some flack from Shabab fans, and at halftime he seemed to respond with a familiar, one-finger salute.

Check the embedded video in the middle of this Spanish-language story.

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The Arabian Gulf League, the UAE’s professional league, over the past year lost two of its more recognizable players — Asamoah Gyan, the Ghana captain and Al Ain forward, who decamped to Shanghai SIPG; and Grafite, the leading scorer for the 2009 Bundesliga champions Wolfsburg and later of Al Ahli, now back in Brazil.

Of those who remain, as the 2015/16 season picks up steam, here are five players with whom global soccer fans may be at least vaguely familiar.

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The game we know from April through August changes markedly the final month of the season, due to Major League Baseball’s roster expansion.

Limited to 25 players for the first five months, they can add eight, nine, 10, 15 extra players beginning on September 1, which allows for more one-dimensional players and a lot more pitchers.

It is an abomination, and the rule needs to be tweaked.

Gregg Patton, a friend and former colleague in Southern California, writes about baseball for The National, here in Abu Dhabi, and this week he took on the “expanded rosters” problem.

Here is what he wrote:

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It is surprising how many people living in the UAE are eager to visit Las Vegas.

No need to make that 20-hour trip.

All the locals need do is check in to Atlantis The Palm in Dubai, and they can enjoy the whole of the mainstream Las Vegas experience — aside from the gambling, that is. And chorus girls.

Atlantis is everything the most garish and over-the-top Las Vegas hotels are. Too big, too expensive, already sliding towards “tatty”, too hot for most of the year, charging too much for meals and for any additional activity, from massages to tours.

Yet people still come here, including me, for the first time.

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I pretty much gave up advocating the dismissal of coaches and managers a decade ago. Maybe more.

I make an exception for Jurgen Klinsmann.

This man is doing so much harm to U.S. soccer that every day he mismanages this team leaves them in a deeper hole from which they must eventually climb.

The 4-1 defeat to Brazil yesterday wasn’t a surprise, but the manner of it was, from reading a cross-section of media reports on the game.

The most alarming bit?

That some members of the U.S. appeared to quit in the second half.

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Qualifying for the 2018 World Cup is really the only international sports story of any significance in the UAE over the next two years.

Some runners, swimmers and shooters will go to the Rio Olympics, the government is crazy about jiu-jitsu, various global golf and tennis and cycling tours will pass through the country between now and then …

But if we ranked this on a descending order of importance, it would look something like: 5) Olympics; 4) jiu-jitsu; 3) soccer; 2) soccer; 1) soccer.

And it is that very nearly “all-in” aspect of the country’s hopes for its best batch of soccer players in a generation that made a scoreless draw with Palestine tonight a troubling development.

The way is now open to the Emiratis not moving on to the final round of Asia qualifying for Russia 2018. Which would be, oh, a sporting calamity.

Here is how the wheels come off at least one round too early:

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