How soccer left its mark on The Sopranos

January 10, 1999 was a busy day in football.

While Mason Mount was born in Portsmouth, 600 miles south Inter Milan’s mesmerising attacking trio of Ronaldo, Ivan Zamorano and Roberto Baggio were putting Venezia to the sword in a thumping 6-2 Serie A win at the San Siro.

Chilean forward Zamorano presumably celebrated his hat-trick in one of Milan’s bustling nightclubs that evening, perhaps treating Ronaldo to a Negroni sbagliato or two in return for assisting the first of his treble with a flurry of stepovers, but had he instead chosen to stay at home for a night in front of the box he would have witnessed television history in the making.

As Mount was struggling to take his first uneasy steps in the world, over on American television network HBO a New Jersey mobster was finding it equally tricky keeping his balance.

January 10, 1999, brought the world Mount, a bullish Zamorano hat-trick and the pilot of The Sopranos, in which mob boss Tony Soprano is forced to visit a psychiatrist after collapsing at a family BBQ.

While that might not sound like a particularly alluring opener, David Chase’s creation spawned 86 episodes of arguably the greatest TV series ever, with all due respect to The Wire, Breaking Bad and Footballers’ Wives. Fast-forward 22 years and, like every kit Gabriel Batistuta adorned at Fiorentina, The Sopranos effortlessly thrives among a modern landscape.

But The Sopranos’ relationship with soccer extends beyond sartorial elegance: Wayne Rooney has tweeted his admiration for Tony and his crew, Rio Ferdinand talked about “all the lads at the club” loving the show during his time at Manchester United and Steven Gerrard blames it for getting in the way of starting his coaching badges.

It takes just nine episodes for football to make an appearance in The Sopranos, although the title name of ‘Boca’, which aired on March 7, 1999, bears no relation to Argentinian outfit Boca Juniors, for whom Diego Maradona had played his final game two years prior.

Football plays a central role in the episode, with Tony’s daughter Meadow starring for her school’s soccer team, coached by the acclaimed Don Hauser. When it transpires that Hauser is considering a rival coaching offer, Tony and his crew pull out all the stops to convince him to stay, only for Meadow to reveal that he’s been sleeping with one of her team-mates.

Putting to one side the distressing nature of the plot, the use of women’s football as a key storytelling tool in a…