India, April 4 -- In big, bold letters on a chart paper, the word "Believe" was pasted on the wall between the changing room and the one where coaches chewed cud at AFC Richmond for most of the first three seasons of "Ted Lasso".

Khalid Jamil is as different from the Kansan football coach of the eponymous series as loquacious is from reserved but connecting reel and real, fact and fiction, is the ability of both to get their teams to internalise the seven-letter word.

Like Lasso getting Richmond "unrelegated", Jamil got Pronay Halder to slot in at centre-back and managed to get another season from 35-year-olds Javi Hernandez and Pratik Chaudhari, Ashutosh Mehta, who is 34 and returned to professional football after serving a two-year ba...