Football is the most popular sport in the world bar none, yet it’s always had a hard time in the United States. Never mind it’s not that football really cares, as the World Cup’s viewership roughly equates to hosting 64 Super Bowls in a single month. Instead, what’s truly fascinating about it is how the richest nation on the planet somehow skipped learning a lesson widespread across the globe, that “Football is life” and there’s no better time to get into it than right now.
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The Ted Lasso Effect
Ask any die-hard football fan and they will say capturing the sport in film is pretty darn difficult, as for all the popularity the Goal! trilogy attained a decade ago, football has never really been on par with the cinematic masterpieces dedicated to boxing, baseball or basketball. Its very non-stop nature seems to oppose the ability of a director to capture its action. It’s the reason why FIFA’s My Player Career is not the go-to option for gamers as a first-person perspective doesn’t do it justice the way Rocky or Raging Bull immersed moviegoers in a 1v1 fight.
However, great sports movies don’t thrive due to being perfect simulations, but rather because of the stories they tell through the lens of a particular discipline, because of how characters overcome their own weaknesses to give their best when the stakes are at their highest, because athletes make for great heroes and even better underdogs. Ted Lasso is the ultimate underdog.
In its first 3 minutes, Ted Lasso achieves what some writers cannot accomplish in a full movie as scene by scene the news of him signing for AFC Richmond get the ball rolling. Ted is the definition of a nice guy and an underdog, it doesn’t matter he’s not the man for the job, the audience wants him to win. It’s impossible to hate Ted and the series happened to air for the first time at a time when football fans were really missing the sport and non-football people needed Ted Lasso’s dad jokes as he intied them to “Believe.”
Viewers learn about football at the same rate Lasso does (probably faster), nevertheless, it’s the man’s charisma and his undying message of hope to his players that makes him such an endearing character. Ted Lasso’s success is easier to explain because of the show’s sheer quality, though its popularity helped carve out a niche for football content that’s now been filled by Welcome to Wrexham.
For The New Soccer Fans
A football docuseries shouldn’t do well in the US, yet with Ted Lasso having laid the groundwork for it, and the absurdity of Reynolds and McElhenney’s venture, the fact that its first season did so well shouldn’t surprise anyone. Despite the business approach the actors brought the table, their unfamiliarity with football mirrors that of a Ted Lasso newbie — like coach Lasso, Reynolds and McElhenney still can’t make sense of the offside rule, but their passion for this venture feels just as genuine as the fictional manager’s.
Welcome to Wrexham is reaping the benefits of Ted Lasso two years later, and both shows’ cultural impact should be self-evident from them joining one of the biggest football products out there, FIFA 23. At the time of writing, FIFA 23 sits comfortably at number 8 on Twitch streaming charts, with this year’s edition being the best launch EA has ever had for game that’s never hjad porblems selling.
Naturally, it helps that for a change FIFA 23 is a compelling buy as the game now features crossplay between its PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC players, gameplay is as refined as it’s ever been and the Qatar 2022 World Cup mode will be a free add-on. Still, It’s hard to imagine how many new fans the series onboarded this year thanks to Ted Lasso and the fully playable AFC Richmond’s popularity.
With the World Cup taking place in December for the first time in history, a perfect storm has formed as Ted Lasso’s third season looks bound to release shortly after the tournament. Not only that, the show has signed a deal with the English Premier League that should see AFC Richmond face the best teams in the world and some pretty fantastic cameos.
For all these things to come together is definitely a dream for lifelong football fanatics, but even more so for newcomers that get to experience the sport across all fronts, in what is definitely a first. What makes it even better is that it’s not an isolated phenomenon, or one that a particular region is missing out on, it’s now become as global as anything can be ahead of the the sport’s premiere event.
As Canada and the United States embark on their World Cup campaign this winter, it’s likely Reynolds and McElhenney will experience the sport in a whole new manner. They have skin in the game now, they know what a last-minute goal feels like on either side of the score, and they might hope to see Wrexham players at the event one day. They’re also not alone, they’re part of the game now, and for many people, Wrexham and Richmond were also the first soccer football teams that got them hooked on the beautiful game.
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