#How ‘Ted Lasso’ Paid Tribute to Soccer Journalist Grant Wahl

[This story contains minor spoilers for “Big Week,” the fourth episode of Ted Lasso’s third season.]

During the April 5 episode of Ted Lasso, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) holds a copy of Grant Wahl’s book The Beckham Experiment, about the soccer superstar’s decision to jump from top European leagues to the L.A. Galaxy of Major League Soccer in the United States. At the time the scene was filmed, it was intended as an Easter egg, as most of Beard’s reading choices have been (earlier in the season, he and Ted (Jason Sudeikis) thumbed through the football strategy book Inverting the Pyramid).

By the time the episode debuted on Apple TV+, however, the nod to Wahl had turned into into a tribute. Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm while covering the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar, and the show dedicated the episode, “Big Week,” to him with a title card in the closing credits.

Hunt, a co-creator and executive producer of Ted Lasso, told The Hollywood Reporter that Wahl was a fan of the series — and that he helped out the writers as they crafted storylines involving Trent Crimm (James Lance) writing a book about AFC Richmond and the arrival of superstar Zava (Maximilian Osinski) to the team.

“When we knew we were going to have the storyline of Trent embedded with the team, we thought about reporters who’ve done that — John Feinstein came to mind [for his book A Season on the Brink, about Indiana University’s basketball program], and Grant as well. Specifically, because Grant’s book is about football but also about the arrival of a superstar and the change of a culture with David Beckham, we went to him right away.”

As they were starting to break the Zava story, the writers sent Wahl a list of questions about how the arrival of such a larger-than-life figure might affect the team, “hoping he might have time to toss up a few answers,” Hunt said. “In what I now know to be his typical generosity with his time, he wrote very long, very detailed, very valuable answers to all our questions. He was hugely helpful.”

Hunt and Wahl later spent time together when Wahl covered a match between the U.S. women’s national team and England in October 2022. “On his way to the airport he came to Richmond,” Hunt recalled. “He came to my house, he met my family, I showed him around Richmond and we had a fucking great day talking about football. Like everyone, we were all shocked and affected by his loss. To carry on the train of salutes to his memory was something we felt obligated to do.”