How Did The Football Teams In Ted Lasso Fare In Real World Sports This Season?

"Ted Lasso" always lived in its own little bubble of the universe, a sort of parallel world that resembles ours in many ways — the passion for football, the archetypical football celebrities, a footballer whose name starts with Z being incredible, and also a huge jerk — but with some key differences too, like the show's depiction of English football, or the fact that we rarely hear or see actual footballers who play in the Premier League.

One of the biggest signs that "Ted Lasso" is clearly not based in our reality was the portrayal of West Ham as one of the best teams in the league this season. In our world, the team finished 14 out of 20 places in the Premier League. But West Ham has recently celebrated a major victory — just not in England. Earlier this week, the London team, led by manager David Moyes, managed to go home with the title during the UEFA Europa Conference League, the third tier of European international club competition after the Champions League (which is totally different from the English Championship) and the UEFA Europa League. 

If you're like us, and you need a fix of Richmond kindness and football thrills, you may be desperate for any hint as to what may happen to the characters after the final scene of season 3. While we don't yet know if there will be more "Ted Lasso," we do know what happened to the teams featured on the show.

In a world without Ted Lasso pulling a Pep Guardiola and using Total Football to reach for the stars, and without Nate the Wonderkid quitting before the end of the season, things went a bit differently in the real Premier League.

First up is AFC Richmond's white whale, the team that always eluded them until a fateful (and thrilling) match in the penultimate episode of the season: Manchester City. The team is managed by the real wunderkind, Pep Guardiola — widely considered one of the best football managers of all time, and apparently Ted Lasso's man crush. In the "Ted Lasso" finale, Manchester City ends up winning the league, and to no one's surprise, the team did the same in real life. Indeed, Manchester City topped the Premier League in 2023 for the third year in a row, all three times with Guardiola as manager. On Saturday night, they also reached the Champions League final for their second time ever. Their previous time ended with a loss against Chelsea, but this time they emerged victorious from a match with Inter Milan.

Also featured this season was Chelsea, the team where a young Roy Kent began his career in the Premier League. Though Chelsea is considered one of the big teams, they had a less-than-stellar season this year. They started out with six wins in their first 11 games before falling dramatically the rest of the season, scoring a record low 38 goals across their entire 38-match season. This was their worst season since the mid-'90s, and they even faced the threat of relegation for a while — something Richmond is very familiar with.

Lastly, we have Arsenal F.C. We first see Arsenal in the world of "Ted Lasso" in season 1, where a heavy defeat for Richmond signaled the beginning of the end for Roy Kent's career. In season 3, the team first attempted their Total Football strategy against Arsenal, and even though they lost the game, their great performance convinced them the tactic would work. 

In real life, Arsenal is kind of close to a real-life Richmond story. After the departure of legendary manager Arsène Wenger in 2018, the team went through a revamp, becoming the youngest team in the Premier League and having a bit of a Cinderella story — which was beautifully captured in the Prime Video show "All or Nothing." The team went from finishing in eighth place in 2020 to coming in second place in 2023, just behind Manchester City.

The world of English football is one full of twists and turns, or rises and falls, of comeback stories and Cinderella fantasies. It's part of what makes this the greatest sport on Earth. As Ted himself says in the finale, it was never about him: the team is bigger than one person, and so is the show. With or without Ted Lasso, there is plenty of great drama and comedy to be mined from the beautiful game.