In 2007, coinciding with the moment David Beckham made his debut for LA Galaxy, I was at their Home Depot Center ground in Los Angeles to watch José Mourinho’s Chelsea compete in something called the World Series of Soccer. Don’t look for this competition – they don’t play it any more. As part of their US summer tour, Chelsea beat LA Galaxy in the last match, though the competition was won on goal difference by – hang on, let me get my reading glasses on – Tigres UANL. Suwon Samsung Bluewings finished fourth.

Before the Galaxy game, Mourinho was asked by an American journalist how much the World Series of Soccer trophy would mean compared with others he had won, including the two Premier League titles and the Champions League with Porto. A pause. Looking the journalist directly in the eye, a smile playing round the corner of his lips, Mourinho declared it would mean just as much to him as all of those – “of course”. Obviously, I never speak for the 99% of gentlemen who make up the rest of the sports press pack but my reaction to the moment was the reflection: “I do slightly love you, you insolent bastard.”

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It has been so unbelievably and immensely long since I slightly loved Mourinho that even mentioning this vignette feels like exhuming a Paleolithic artefact, turning it over in your hands and thinking: Ugh. This is dirty and I have no idea what it is or ever was.

Anyhow. I think the vague point is that no one could watch Mourinho on Manchester United’s summer tour in the US this year, and think anything other than what an endlessly sour bore he is. If Mourinho once felt like the ironist puppeteer at moments like this, he has long commuted down into the proverbial messy bitch who lives for the drama.

This (if slightly paraphrased) appears to be the verdict of some United players, who are reportedly briefing that they are finding the manager’s behaviour “exhausting” and that he is “dragging the whole tour down”. His demeanour is certainly weighing down many United fans, who are facing up to the fear it may well be their turn to endure one of Mourinho’s famous third seasons at a club.

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Where will it end? I see the executive vice-chairman, Ed Woodward, has gone to meet Mourinho in Miami, perhaps to thrash out their transfer war in person, but the real puzzle is all the tricks Woodward has been missing. After all, the way Ed seems to see it, United are in the content business, of which “actual football” is only one of the parts. Consider his verdict on the signing of Alexis Sánchez in January: “The announcement posts generated 75% more interactions than the announcement of the sale of the world’s most expensive player last summer when Neymar moved from Barcelona to PSG.” There was even better news – Jesse Lingard’s recent “takeover” of United’s Instagram page had generated more than 40m impressions.

If your reaction to this is the Alan Partridge “so what?” gesture, catch up. Ed is on precisely the same page as United’s managing director, Richard Arnold, who has characterised the club as “the biggest TV show in the world”. A few years ago, the Irish Times’s Ken Early noted Arnold declaring triumphantly that United had “recently surpassed the social media following of Vin Diesel and were closing on Rihanna”.

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“If you think about why people watch soap operas,” enthused Arnold, “it’s what will happen next. That uncertainly is part of what makes sport exciting.” All these things considered, Mourinho was the perfect hire – a classic soap diva who creates #content seemingly reflexively.

It seems baffling that these particular executives have failed to monetise Mourinho with some sort of fly‑on-the-wall reality series, particularly now the window may be rapidly closing. For all their postmodernist bluster, perhaps, United’s top brass are still some way behind the proper monsters of unscripted television. They have a lot to learn from, say, Mike Darnell – a US TV executive responsible for a welter of smash hits down the years, as well as controversial shows such as Who’s Your Daddy? in which an adult adoptee had to pick her biological father from a lineup.

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Darnell’s sole regret about that show was that all the outrage generated “was outside the programme – so it doesn’t translate into ratings”. Remember: it doesn’t matter if people think your product is trashy or repulsive or morally bankrupt, as long as you are able to alchemise their anger into ratings gold. (This, you will have noted, is a formula which has now taken the biggest reality star of that era all the way to a highly sought after address in Pennsylvania Avenue.)

Something for Woodward and Arnold to bear in mind on their eternal quest to take things to “the next level” commercially. If rushed into production now, an unscripted reality Mourinho series would certainly have the ability to reach beyond the product’s existing customer base, or “Manchester United supporters” as they used to be known. Call it Keeping Up With The KarKrashing One – and give us at least three weeks of unmissable histrionics before its star walks out.