Zinedine Zidane is remembered almost as much for headbutting Marco Materazzi of Italy in the World Cup final in 2006 as he is for his years as a great player.

But how notorious would he be … if he had headbutted the referee, instead?

A midfielder for the Al Ahli team in Dubai did just that, apparently, and it’s making a lot of news. As it should.

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The weather is the No. 1 topic of discussion in the United Arab Emirates at the moment, and not for the usual reasons. Instead of this being one of the hottest places in the world … we are struggling to deal with Arctic temps. Arctic, I tell you.

Like 56 … 55 … 54 … 53 (!) Fahrenheit.

And, imagine this: We will try to endure an overnight low of (brace yourself) 48 degrees on Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

This is not entirely a laughing matter.

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As someone who watched NFL games as a professional observer … well, I pretty much took a generation off.

The Rams and Raiders left Los Angeles after the 1994 season, and the 18 years I worked in the same media market as at least one NFL team has since been nearly equaled by the 17 seasons I have not.

Strangely, I may have watched more NFL football in the past four months, here in Abu Dhabi, than I have for years. (New satellite package!) Even more than when I was covering Super Bowls from 1995 till 2006 or so. I also have watched this extra NFL on television, which is quite different than seeing it live, in the sense of the zillion replays and slo-mo camera work.

And I have noticed one major change in the game:

The passing accuracy of quarterbacks. It’s now off the charts — or the QB is a bum.

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Having done this blog for 3.5 years, most of it while holding a full-time job, while moving or stationary, updated from a half-dozen countries … I can assure you it takes a lot of effort. Just to post. Let alone be good. Let alone be ultra labor-intensive and really good.

Thus, recognizing the effort that went into a clever and informative blog post … well, I feel compelled to share.

The 2011 Bobblehead All-Americans from thebaseballdiaspora.com website.

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More basketball!

I wasn’t planning to go this way. Though I did think, the day before the Lakers played in Miami, that the Heat would win, no problem, and considered writing that just to show my powers of analysis … but then it got too late, and the Heat led by 21 after three before winning by 11. Well, duh.

This is about one of those silly espn.com surveys. The results to this one astound me, and it involves Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

To wit:

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This is hardly noticed in the particularly British (or Indian) parts of the world, but basketball probably is the second-most popular game on the planet.

I know that several sports have made that claim (from volleyball to team handball to ping-pong, etc), but hoops probably is the real No. 2. Plus, a survey conducted last March found that basketball is the No. 2 sport in the UAE right this minute.

FIBA, the international basketball organization, lists 214 member countries, which is six more than FIFA claims for “the world game.”

But basketball is hardly played in Britain or the subcontinent, so the UAE version of the game goes pretty much unnoticed here by the English-language media, which is in thrall to the British and Indian sports suite — because most journalists here come from one of those two backgrounds.

Which means we can’t really blame the UAE Basketball Association for not bothering to promulgate information in English. But things are going on out there, including a domestic league and a national team which plays in most of Asia’s big basketball events.

I managed to find out that the UAE national team play was playing today, and made the 200-mile roundtrip to Dubai and … well, as the headline says, let’s call UAE hoops “a work in progress.”

Final score: Ittihad club of Alexandria 86, UAE 61.

What are the UAE’s problems?

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This probably was a global trend, but it was certainly got a boost from the Barcelona club and the Spain national team.

To wit: Soccer is increasingly the province of tiny men with high technical skills who can run forever. Big is out. Muscles? Not really necessary, aside from those needed to move your almost frighteningly skeletal frame.

We saw more evidence of it over the past few days, when Jurgen Klinsmann, the U.S. national coach, called for quicker and faster players … and Eric Wynalda was quoted saying that Landon Donovan is with Everton right this minute because Klinsmann told Landon he couldn’t take five weeks off and expect to play for the natjonal team during World Cup qualifying.

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I have seen pieces of NBA games, this season, over here in the UAE, and the whole of the Lakers-Bulls game on Christmas Day.

I have seen all of the scores, however. Some former colleagues and I are in about the third decade of an NBA fantasy league (I have both LeBron and Kobe; feeling good!)  so I’m looking at boxes every day … and have been appalled.

Night after night on the densely crowded schedule, teams are dropping stink bombs on unsuspecting fans and TV viewers.

To wit: The Lakers had a seven-point third quarter, their least productive in the era of the shot clock, and scored 73 points against the champion Dallas Mavericks … and won.

It gets worse.

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Everton got a result against Aston Villa on Saturday, a 1-1- tie, their first point in the Premier League since Landon Donovan rejoined the Liverpool-based team on loan from the Galaxy, and when it was over David Moyes, the Everton coach, was calmly direct about identifying his most influential player.

It was Donovan, the Galaxy captain, who made the pass that set up Victor Anichebe with the tying goal, and Moyes noticed.

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I have witnesses to this. Two days before the New Orleans Saints — and the quarterback who enjoyed the most productive season in NFL history — played in San Francisco, I was warning a couple of NFL fans here in Abu Dhabi about Candlestick Park.

I have spent many days in Candlestick, particularly in the 1990s (when the Niners were in the playoffs all the time and the Rams and Raiders weren’t, and SF was a one-day up-and-back road trip from SoCal), and almost all of those days were profoundly unpleasant.

I was telling that to these two guys at the Thirty-First Floor Bar at the Abu Dhabi Holiday Inn (far nicer than it sounds) more than 48 hours before kickoff. “Beware The Stick …”

The Saints are a dome team, and bad things tend to happen to dome teams when they venture outdoors.

And Candlestick is a peculiar form of “outdoors”. Not dependably frozen, this time of year, like Green Bay or Chicago might be. Not potentially mild like Los Angeles or Tampa.

Candlestick is one of the roughest places to play in the NFL. It’s a massive pain just to get there, and a bigger one to sit there. Trust me on this. I can talk about it at length with minimal research. And Saints fans now can talk all about it — if they watched their team turn over the ball five times and lose to the 49ers in the NFL divisional playoffs.

Here is what you can expect at The Stick:

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