Football is a multi-million dollar business. The fight is no longer just about goals, but also about players, advertising contracts and TV broadcasting rights. How nice that in all this commerce there is still AFC Richmond. Because coach Ted Lasso can’t do anything with the hype, he’s actually a football coach from the USA.
He knows next to nothing about football when he arrives in England to coach the Premier League club’s mediocre side. “Ted Lasso” started in Germany in the summer of 2020 and played its way into the hearts of the audience. Now the award-winning series is back. Season 3 starts on Apple TV on Wednesday (March 15).
In season one, Ted, impressively played by Jason Sudeikis (“We Are the Millers”), struggles to gain recognition as a coach in football-mad England. In season two he has to realize that even a Ted Lasso can have problems, for example panic attacks. Even in season three, the permanent optimist has to endure a lot. Particularly painful: Nate, a natural trainer, left him in an argument. In the future he will be teaching his brilliant tricks to West Ham United players.
Parole: “Believe”
According to the media, the Greyhounds from AFC Richmond will probably only make it to the bottom of the table. But Ted issues the slogan: “Believe”. To himself, to the players, to the team and to the victory, albeit with unconventional methods.
They are all reunited. The taciturn, well-read Beard (Brendan Hunt) who assists in training with the extremely short-tempered Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein). Busy Keeley (Juno Temple), who has her own PR agency. And the ambitious Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), who still wants to get even with her ex and who makes it big in the new episodes, as “feisty Welton”, as Waddingham describes. And of course Nate, who has risen from the almost invisible helper to the “child prodigy” but clearly feels uncomfortable in the role, played very convincingly by Nick Mohammed.
“Ted Lasso” offers everything that is missing in many series. An excellent ensemble that plays with joy. An entertaining story that skilfully combines funny, emotional and melancholic moments. And fast-paced screenplays with wonderful wit. If you can speak English, you should watch the series in the original. Because many of the pointed dialogues are much funnier in English, as some of the quick wit and subtleties of humor are lost in the translation.
The fact that the series is so popular and was honored with eleven Emmy Awards is not least due to the sayings. There are whole pages of quotations on the internet. And in the “Fifa 23” computer game, gamblers can also fill their teams with Richmond players such as Roy Kent, Sam Obisanya, Jamie Tartt or Dani Rojas.
Jason Sudeikis: “I’m called Coach”
For Sudeikis, who is also the idea generator, co-producer and partly also screenwriter, fame is a sometimes bizarre experience. People reacted to the actors like they would to a real football team, he said in a press conference shortly before the start of the new season. “And I’m called Coach, very exciting. I don’t know if the people of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ are also called Doctor.”
The secret of success? “We do it the lasso method,” says Rebecca at some point in the series. Tackle things optimistically and courageously. Rebecca actress Waddingham is now also taking this to heart privately, as she said at the press conference: “Trying to live the Ted Lasso way has become an integral part of my life”.
