What Ted Lasso Gets Right (And Wrong) About Soccer, Er, Football

We English are extremely passionate and territorial about our national sport. Even as an Englishman who started following my home club, Ipswich Town, over 30 years ago, it still surprises me how much football permeates our culture whenever I take a trip back to the UK. Almost any social interaction, whether it is small talk with the owner of a corner shop or the preamble to a business meeting, usually involves a little footy banter.

Football, aka soccer, took its modern form when the Football Association laid down the rules in 1863. The first English Football League season followed in 1888, a 12-team competition that saw Preston North End crowned champions. The English take a nostalgic pride in giving football to the world, although our national team has long been eclipsed by other nations who have refined and perfected the game. Even so, we still like to think that our long history of mediocrity on the international stage is merely a blip; you'll still hear certain sections of the crowd singing "Two World Wars and One World Cup" whenever England plays Germany, willfully ignoring the fact that the Germans have racked up three trophies since our lone triumph in 1966.

This arrogance sometimes leads to misconceptions about other nations too, not least the United States. Many English supporters still hold the conviction that Americans will never understand our beautiful game the way we do, and their insistence on calling the sport "soccer" instead of football is always guaranteed to get a hardcore English fan spluttering into their pint.

This brings me to "Ted Lasso," the Emmy Award-winning comedy-drama from Apple TV+ about an optimistic but clueless American Football coach (Jason Sudeikis) drafted in to manage lowly AFC Richmond, a fictional English Premier League club. What does this American take on the English national sport get right, or wrong?

There is plenty of obvious fish-out-of-water comedy in "Ted Lasso," much of it deriving from the contrasts between U.S. and English culture. Ted hates tea, has never eaten a curry before, and hasn't got a clue what the offside rule is.  He's constantly amused by the language differences, and his lack of experience and optimistic motivational approach doesn't go down well in the bear pit of his first press conference or with the Richmond faithful.

Luckily for him, the club is based in the affluent London borough of Richmond-on-Thames, which was voted the happiest place to live in London in 2022. This also makes it one of the least likely places to get your head kicked in by disgruntled footy fans. Ted takes up residence in a nice apartment on a picturesque side street and the area, filmed on location in Richmond, looks like a Richard Curtis wet dream of cozy middle-class London.

Nevertheless, Ted is repeatedly called a "wanker" by his new neighbors, including an old man and three guys who watch Richmond games in his local pub. This choice of insult seems a little off to me. English fans might direct the universal "wanker" hand gesture towards players and managers from the stands, but the actual word "wanker" is usually reserved for referees, as in the evergreen chant of disapproval: "The referee's a wanker!"

Secondly, we English can get a little belligerent when drunk, but most of us try to avoid direct confrontation. It's done for comic effect in the show, but I can't see an entire community shouting "wanker" at Ted in the street or pub. We're too polite for that. The only fans who might verbally abuse him in public are members of a hooligan firm, and they would more likely call him a "twat" or a "c**t" instead.

"Ted Lasso" does a fair job of detailing football's turbulent relationship with the British media, from the scum-sucking tabloids to the pundits in the studio. As Rebecca plots the downfall of the club, she banks on the newspapers to bring Ted down, leaking candid (but totally innocent) pics of him with Jamie Tartt's kind-hearted girlfriend, Keely Jones (Juno Temple), to the tabloids. She also sanctions a profile of her new manager from Trent Crimm (James Lance), who represents a more cerebral aspect of sports journalism in the country that is just as capable of ruining reputations as the more bawdy red tops.

The show has fun with sensational headlines that all ring true. "Never underestimate the power of rhyme in this country," Keeley warns Ted, which actually undersells the tabloid talent for battering sports teams and personalities with colorful wordplay, puns, and photo editing. At the top end, you have the famous headline from The Sun regarding Celtic's defeat against underdogs Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the Scottish Cup: "Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious," riffing on "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from "Mary Poppins." At the other end, the same paper mercilessly hounded hapless England Manager Graham Taylor in the mid-'90s. After a defeat to Sweden, they ran with "SWEDES 2 TURNIPS 1," and also superimposed his face on a picture of a turnip.

"Ted Lasso" also gently sends up two other venerable aspects of English football media: commentary and punditry. Journeyman Chris Powell, formerly of Charlton Athletic and many other clubs, amusingly plays himself as a co-commentator, offering some incredibly mundane observations from the gantry. It neatly lampoons the banal say-what-you-see style of English commentary. We have had some great commentators, not least the recently departed John Motson, but even the best have a tendency to describe the action kick-for-kick and churn statistics instead of offering tactical insight.

In season 1, episode 9, Ted interrupts Rebecca during a photo shoot for a profile of women in football. She dismisses it: "It's not a big deal. There's like four of us: Me, Karren, Delia, and Posh Spice."

She's talking about Karren Brady, who became perhaps the most recognizable woman in English football when she became Managing Director of Birmingham City in 1993; Delia Smith, the dry-as-dust former TV cook who became the majority shareholder of my club's biggest rivals, Norwich City, in 1996; and Victoria Beckham, formerly of the Spice Girls, who doesn't actually have anything to do with football apart from marrying England legend David Beckham.

It's a good line from Rebecca, but it somewhat downplays the role of women in the Premier League and sounds dated only three years later. Football is still a male-dominated sport, but you also have several important female figures in the division like Marina Granovskaia, a Chelsea director who Forbes ranked 5th in their list of "Most Powerful Women in International Sports" in 2018, and Donna Maria-Cullen, the Executive Director of Tottenham Hotspur.

Interest in women's football has soared over the past few years, correlating with more female personalities in the pundit's chair and the commentary boxes. This has been boosted by the success of Sarina Wiegman's swashbuckling England Women's National Team, who joyously romped to glory in the Euros last year in front of record attendances and viewing audiences for the women's game in Britain. These new voices are a breath of fresh air, bringing astute analysis and a different perspective to a profession that has long been the domain of middle-aged white guys chuckling at each other. Added to this, you also have an increasing presence of women officiating high-profile matches, another encouraging sign that the sport is gradually moving towards equality.