Ted Lasso's Big Season 3 Cameo Was Years In The Making For Jason Sudeikis

"Ted Lasso" is many things: a show about mental health, community and self-improvement, a comedy about culture shock, and a thrilling sports drama about the joys and heartbreaks of association football. When it comes to this last part, the Apple TV+ series is in kind of a weird place. You see, AFC Richmond is a fictional team, but it competes against real teams. For the most part, "Ted Lasso" stays in its own little bubble, in part because the show has its own analogs to real-life players — like Dani Rojas being heavily inspired by Javier "Chicharito" Hernández, or Jamie Tartt serving as a sort of Ronaldo stand-in, or Zlatan being a clear inspiration for Zava.

This isn't to say "Ted Lasso" is entirely disconnected from the real world. The show has plenty of references to real athletes, and there have been some stellar cameos from actual football players and pundits, like Chris Kamara and Chris Powell, or Thierry Henry and Arlo White. But season three delivered its biggest cameo yet, in classic "Ted Lasso" fashion, when Pep Guardiola appeared at the end of the match between AFC Richmond and Man City.

This is a huge cameo, one that Jason Sudeikis had been dreaming about for years. As he told Men in Blazers, Sudeikis got into the "FIFA" video game series the past few years, mostly playing as Manchester City, and digging the team and Pep and "his verve and fashion sense."

"It's not just his choice, you know, it's also his body and his silhouette, you know?" Sudeikis continued. "And it's — he's got one of those, like, you know, little Mick Jagger waists, you know? It's like you gotta put in an extra hole on those belts."

The cameo comes at the end of a climactic clash between AFC Richmond and the current leader of the Premier League (and its winner in real life), Manchester City. This was not just a crucial game for Lasso and the team as a whole, but for Jamie Tartt, who has quietly become the best part of the season and originally played for Manchester City before quitting to become a reality TV star before the events of season one. 

When Richmond gets away with a win, Guardiola offers Ted Lasso some words of wisdom, before sharing a moment with his former player, Jamie. 

This "Ted Lasso" season has been a bit of a mixed bag. While it is still perfectly capable of offering poignant moments of emotion, some football exhilaration, and plenty of fantastic pop culture references — Coach Beard comparing his life to that of Jean Valjean in the penultimate episode was particularly fun — it is overly long, meandering, and too devoted to an underwhelming redemption tale. Still, moments like Guardiola's cameo make it all worth it.