The world’s most valuable sports team hasn’t won a thing in decades. How?

Before he was the title character of an Emmy-winning series, Ted Lasso was the star of a 2013 marketing campaign for NBC after the network was awarded the broadcasting rights for the Premier League in the United States.

The ad followed the same fish-out-of-water premise as the show it later inspired: Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis, was a red-blooded American football coach hired by Tottenham Hotspur struggling to grasp the basics of “soccer”.

In one scene, Lasso gets briefed by his assistant on England’s two most storied clubs.

Manchester United, he is told, is “super rich” and “everyone either loves them, or hates them.”

“Dallas Cowboys,” Lasso replies, playing a round of cross-sport word association.

Liverpool “used to be great”, the assistant instructs, but “haven’t won a title in a really long time”.

“Also Dallas Cowboys,” Lasso says.

The set-up could use an update. Liverpool, of course, have since returned to the summit of both England and Europe. Manchester United are as polarizing as ever – and still spend gobs of money – but the club inspires more schadenfreude among its rivals than it did when the ad first aired.

The Cowboys, however, remain as they were: loved and hated in equal abundance, a generation removed from their glory years and, above all, “super rich”.

America’s Team will report to training camp next week in Oxnard, California, to begin preparations for the 2022 season, 27 years since their last Super Bowl-winning campaign. Dallas have posted a 4-11 playoff record since then and have not advanced beyond the second round of the postseason. Thirteen different franchises – including two of their hated division rivals – have won the title since the Cowboys’ last championship season, and Dallas were