When Ted Lasso, the relentlessly optimistic American football coach at the heart of Apple TV+’s hit series, is unexpectedly sent from Kansas City to London to coach an English soccer team, he finds himself in unfamiliar territory. He must quickly get to grips with a new sport, a new culture and, of course, being called a w***** every five minutes.
After moving from California to London in 2023, Adriel Lares — the American CFO of Chelsea Football Club — couldn’t help but notice the similarities. “I knew that football equals soccer, but that’s about it,” he admits.
Lares grew up in Texas, the son of Mexican immigrants, before building an impressive career in Silicon Valley finance, leading IPOs and acquisitions at major startups. But when Chelsea — one of London’s most storied Premier League clubs — came calling, Lares decided to leave the tech world behind, trading the California sun for the English drizzle.
“The pinch-me moment is like, how did this kid from Texas go to California, get to have this incredible tech career, and now I'm here in London doing this? No words,” he adds with a dash of Lasso’s trademark, saccharine positivity.
Asked why he made the major life change, Lares points to the chance for an “incredible change of lifestyle for my family,” coupled with “the challenge of adapting my role in a completely different industry or sport.”
In the comedy series — now in its fourth season — Lasso leaves his family amid turmoil in his marriage to coach the fictional Premier League team, AFC Richmond. He is hired by Rebecca Welton (played by Hannah Waddingham) in an act of sabotage against her unfaithful ex-husband (Anthony Head) after she won ownership of the team in her divorce.
“I didn't get a divorce during the process, no spoiler alerts on that one,” Lares jokes.
Like Lasso, Lares made the leap across the pond before his family, spending 10 months in England without them. He says it “certainly wasn’t easy, but I think it was much more difficult for my wife, who was solo parenting three kids and a dog back in San Francisco. I was here by myself, away from my family, and I just felt incredibly welcomed.”
To accelerate his learning of the game, he turned to several books, including The Club by Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson and Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. And, of course, he binge-watched Ted Lasso — twice.
I thought I knew what scrutiny meant. And then I got to a Premier League football team
Adriel Lares, Chelsea Football Club CFO
“The thing that I most appreciated about Ted Lasso was the way that it honored the English culture and, sometimes, London culture,” says Lares. “All those characters that you see there — I’m not gonna say all of them because I don’t want to out anybody — but a lot of them showed up in my daily life, and I loved it.”
Those characters could include Mae (Annette Badland), the owner and manager of Ted’s local pub, the trio of AFC Richmond fans who turn up to that very pub to watch every match, or the fan who repeatedly calls Lasso that aforementioned British slur when the team is underperforming.
Then there’s Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift), AFC Richmond’s director of football operations — the character Lares feels he most closely resembles, given the nature of his own job. “I know that I’m not as good-looking as Higgins, but I hope that I’m as good as he is in terms of delivering the administrative part,” he quips.
British football culture also means contending with passionate, often raucous fans who scrutinize Chelsea FC’s every move. For all the ways watching Ted Lasso helped prepare Lares for life at Chelsea, there were some aspects of football that the show could never have prepared him for.
“I’ve been in technology companies for the last 20 years. Some of those companies have gone public on the New York Stock Exchange,” he explains. “I thought I knew what scrutiny meant — and then I got to a Premier League football team. Every single move that we do is scrutinized, and it’s not just scrutinized locally, but also globally.”
That scrutiny — and the question of who gets a place in football’s spotlight — is also at the heart of Ted Lasso’s fourth season. As the series rolls out new episodes each week, its focus has shifted from AFC Richmond’s men’s team to its newly formed women’s squad, taking on the inequities between men’s and women’s sports and the backlash from within the Richmond community over the decision to start a women’s team in the first place.
Lares, who continues to watch the show, applauded Ted Lasso for daring to put a women’s team center stage.
“I’m really excited to see where they go, but they’re also asking some really, really, challenging questions about men’s versus women’s sports and how they have been treated in the past,” Lares says. “These are things that we’re dealing with today.”
Lares’s mentality is rooted in reality in a way that Lasso sometimes lacks. He’s aware that football comes with its fair share of ups and downs. “The challenge is that once you get to a status or a history or a legacy of a Chelsea, nothing but success will do,” he says, adding that “there's very little wiggle room.”
And yet, for all his realism about the pressures of the job, Lares has developed a philosophy that wouldn’t sound out of place in the AFC Richmond dressing room.
“Try to assume the best,” he says cheerfully of his approach to work. “If it doesn't quite work out the way that you think it may work, then just take the input and … adjust a little bit.”
Ted couldn’t have said it better himself.
