The best Ted Lasso spin-off is playing out in real life

The most successful spin-off of Ted Lasso wasn’t written by the Apple TV screenwriters. It doesn’t have a title yet, we don’t know how many episodes it will have and, above all, it isn’t filmed on a set. It takes place on a real pitch, in the American second division, and stars Cristo Fernández, the Mexican actor who for three seasons played Dani Rojas, the enthusiastic striker convinced that ‘football is life’.

Today, that quip no longer belongs solely to the character. Fernández, aged 35, has in fact made his debut for El Paso Locomotive FC in the USL Championship, the second tier of US professional football. The New York Times, in an interview by Jonathan Abrams, reports that before becoming famous as an actor, Fernández had actually been a footballer: he played in Guadalajara, Mexico, but a serious knee injury cut short his career whilst he was still a teenager, leading him towards acting.

For years he’d tried to distance himself from football. The sport reminded him of something to which he’d devoted everything and in which he believed he’d failed. Then came Ted Lasso. To play a professional, he had to train, stay fit and have the physique of a professional. Five or six years spent on the show, he says, gradually reopened a door he’d tried to shut. Meetings with his childhood idols – Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and the great Mexican footballers – did the rest. Every time someone told him that a comeback was impossible, Fernández felt a growing desire to prove them wrong.

His story is interesting precisely because it turns the usual mechanism on its head. Normally, cinema takes a real life and transforms it into a narrative. Here, a television narrative has transformed a real life. For years, Fernández played an optimistic, determined footballer who was in love with the game, and in the end, that footballer rubbed off on him. Dani Rojas was created by the writers based on his own personality: initially, in the script, he was supposed to play an Icelander called Gunnar. After the audition, the role was rewritten to fit him. Now it is difficult to tell where Cristo ends and Dani begins.

Of course, his return is not a publicity stunt. Fernández emphasises the unseen hard work. Taking to the pitch isn’t simply about touching the ball and receiving applause: it means being physically up to the task, enduring training sessions, tackles, competition and the judgement of one’s teammates. The journey lasted three years, away from the cameras. Before signing for El Paso, he had also undertaken a trial with Chicago Fire FC II.

There is also a more personal reason. His father, who died in December, had initially reminded him of his previous injuries and the need to protect his knees. But after listening to his son’s reasons, he told him he believed in him and wanted to see him back on the pitch. Fernández turned those words into a promise.

When news of his signing became public, messages from Jason Sudeikis and the other cast members started coming in on the WhatsApp group called “Ted Lasso Gang”. Fernández replied that without that television family, he would not have returned to playing. The series restored his confidence, enabled him to come to terms with an injury and, as he himself says, made him feel like a child again.

The fourth series of Ted Lasso is set to follow the coach’s return to Richmond to manage a second-tier women’s team. But in the meantime, the real sequel to the series has already begun in El Paso. All that’s missing is the final scene: Fernández’s first goal. She hasn’t yet decided how to celebrate it. Perhaps she’ll run round in circles, like Dani Rojas. At that point, it will no longer be life imitating art. It will be a television character who has given her actor back the life she thought she had lost.