George Arthur Rose, a clever, bitter, disappointed man, is sitting in his sordid dwelling scribbling away with his cat for company when two men knock on the door and ask him if he’d like to be Pope. So, in Hadrian VII, Rose reforms Christendom, realigns global politics, shines a light of goodness into the world and in the end is assassinated by, so far as I remember, hitmen from the Liberal Party.

It’s a great fantasy, being Pope. You don’t need qualifications, it’s not like being a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist. You don’t have to pass many exams, unlike, say, judges (and judging exams are, of course, noted for their rigour).

Perhaps this newspaper should offer its readers a Fantasy Pope competition, or a Fantasy Prime Minister, or a Fantasy President of the United States; none of these jobs requires special qualifications and we all know we could perform them better than the present incumbents. But such a competition would be hard to formulate: so we have fantasy football instead. All you have to do is manage a football club: and anybody can do that. Like being the Pope.

That is why the cult of the manager has taken over not just football but all of sport. Football managers get more coverage than anyone else in sport. And anyone could do their job. You don’t need any particular skill. You have no exams of especial rigour. You just have to give it a go and the results tell you how well you are doing.

You don’t even have to be good at football. Arsène Wenger and José Mourinho were both hopeless. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the worse a footballer you are or were, the better a manager you will become.

Also, you can be a football manager when you are old. Sir Alex Ferguson is bus-pass age and he’s just won the Barclays Premiership. Being a football manager: it is the most accessible possible fantasy for the ageing male. He can’t play football - he’s old, he’s got no skills, he’s got no qualifications - and yet . . . and yet . . . he wins time and time again.

What nonsexual fantasy can compare to that, particularly when you bear in mind that everyone has the prettiest wife at home? fantasy football is fantasy made accessible - almost real. The idea of running the length of the pitch and scoring the winning goal palls a bit when people begin to realise that even running the length of the pitch is getting a bit beyond them.

But the glorious opportunity to go out and manage - to go out and be the Pope of your own football team - is simply irresistible. That’s why 7 per cent of adult Americans are involved in fantasy sports, and they spend an average of three hours a week on them.

And why not? It is the only way of unleashing the pope within. It is, after all, highly unlikely that there will be a knock on your door and that two people will interrupt your conversation with your cat to ask you if you want to manage Manchester United.

But you can get around this singular deficit in the way the world is arranged by setting up your own fantasy football team and then measuring yourself against all the other would-be Popes that populate the land. The essential thing about sport is that you compete, after all. It’s very well having reveries about giving the half-time talk that turns things around in the Champions League final: by playing the game, you can actually beat people.

That’s what lifts the fantasy just a little way out of fantasy. The fact that you can win and lose adds a homeopathic dose of reality into all this. This touch of reality ensures that your exhilaration in victory is not fantastic but real; and likewise, your disappointment in losing.

What must it be like to be a football manager? A managerial press conference is the most vivid experience in deference that anyone not actually anointed king could experience. You can treat players as you wish: you can throw teacups at them, hairdryer them, kick boots at them.

You may not have any proper qualifications, but you are the man whose sole functions are (a) to take all the credit when you win and (b) get blamed at all other times. Responsibility without power could hardly be got on easier terms. But you blind yourself to that, because you are going to win. You know it in your heart. Player lets you down? Sell the bastard, bring in another, selected by means of your managerial gut instinct. You have all the power in the world: until, of course, you start to lose.

But even then, you call on your defences: it’s not you that’s wrong (ever), it’s your critics that are wrong (always). You march on into the fantasy world, just like a real manager, knowing that like Pope Hadrian VII, you are infallible. Until the next defeat, anyway.

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