But many adore football and I used to. I went through a phase in my 20s of going to league matches throughout the winter and getting very excited about world cups and Euros and that sort of thing. One terrible year, I think I even made a wallchart.

I say “terrible”; it was great at the time. If you’re into it, you’re into it. Often what you’re into is the very concept of being into it, like a sort of reverse phobia; it’s less about the football than the going to the football, obsessively collecting moments and matches and corners and goals in a spirit of focused completism.

But then one day, like Keyser Söze: poof, it was gone! I was over it. I was over it to such an extent that the past started to be wiped away: one day, over the table at a high-stakes poker game, I chattily told Teddy Sheringham about the UEFA Champions League Final I’d once watched in Barcelona, regaling him with descriptions of the injury time goals for about 10 minutes before he interrupted to politely explain that he’d scored one of them.

My enthusiasm can still bubble up on occasion. During this last summer’s burst of doomed hope, I enjoyed watching the Euro games through my small daughter’s eyes; there was an amazing few days when she had seen three football matches in her entire life, during which England had scored seven goals and conceded none. She assumed this was perfectly normal.

Nevertheless, my feelings about the beautiful game have settled generally down into “It’s fine”, so I neither cleave to nor despise Ted Lasso’s depiction of it.

As for the quality of the sitcom… it’s a bit wishy-washy. Everyone’s terribly nice and woke. Flawed characters learn lessons and behave better (if the team included Basil Fawlty or David Brent, Blackadder or Mark Corrigan or Edina Monsoon or Margo Leadbetter, they’d soon have their ghastliness stamped out of them) and Ted himself is like a visiting Jesus.

I’m not sure comedy can work when everyone is this self-aware and quick to change. A particular low point for me was a line in episode seven: “Let me introduce Flo Collins, my best mate since we were little, a brilliant child psychologist and proud, newly single mother to the most amazing 12-year-old little girl called Nora.” That’s enough saccharine exposition to bring on diabetes.

But aha! Clever readers will have spotted that I have watched at least seven episodes. The truly eagle-eyed will know that I’ve got as far as episode nine. Why so much, if it’s so bland?

Well, there are some very good performances. And it’s all glossy to look at. I don’t hate it. It’s fine. I quite like it. It’s just been a bit over-praised, I suppose.

The Emmy for Best Comedy (or “Outstanding Comedy Series”) has been won in the last few years by Schitt’s Creek, Fleabag, Modern Family and 30 Rock. The all-time record holder is Frasier. By all means watch Ted Lasso while you eat your omelette or finish your knitting, but not until you have seen every single episode of those great and incomparable shows. They’re a whole different ball game.