The new season of Ted Lasso seems to have borrowed more than a few cues from the 2007 Bollywood film Chak De! India, where Shah Rukh Khan as coach Kabir Khan steers the Indian women’s hockey team to a World Cup victory. Jason Sudeikis, who plays Ted, is building the women’s football team for Richmond.
Of course, SRK and Sudeikis as coaches are very distinct. But the problems riddling the women’s football team in Ted Lasso are the same as those with Khan’s hockey team two decades ago. Funnily, the solutions also take a strikingly familiar route. Hard to believe that evolution pressed pause for 20-odd years.
Let me illustrate. The biggest challenge that coach Kabir Khan faces is to unite a fragmented team — there is the old guard led by Bindiya Naik, who was at odds with freshers like Priti Sabharwal, Mary Ralte and Molly Zimik, who refused to fall in line. Khan tries to unify them, even at the cost of making himself the enemy, but fails.
Cut to the iconic scene, shot at a McDonald’s outlet in Connaught Place in Delhi. A bunch of rowdies eve-tease the women’s team and they retaliate, in unison. They find the common enemy, as Khan puts it later in the film, in every man who belittled them, disrespected them, and neglected them. That scene, to me, was a masterpiece. It eerily empowered me, as it may have many Indian women, and left an indelible imprint on my mind. The thing about masterpieces, however, is that they cannot be recreated.
Twenty years later, Ted Lasso is reproducing the same plot, conflict and resolution. And it’s off-putting, to say the least. Richmond’s women’s football team, Lady Greyhounds, is largely divided into three groups — the opportunistic attackers, the cautious defenders and the midfielders who play moderators for the first two. The classic case of cliques, which is overcome soon after a bar fight between the women’s team and a group of men who taunted and teased them.
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Two decades too late
I am not criticising the makers for borrowing elements or getting inspired by an Indian superhit. My grouse with them is that even two decades later, the makers chose to show cliques as the pain points among women athletes, and insolent men as tools to unify them. As if the women players can’t have distinct egos, vulnerabilities, insecurities or a cracking backstory. As if the women players can’t unite on the shared goal to win a title, or shared pain they suffer due to their biology.
The first three seasons, in fact, had no mention of cliques. Among the Richmond men’s football team, the conflict revolved around Jamie Tartt’s main character syndrome; Roy Kent’s bitterness as a veteran; Nate’s insecurity as an overlooked kit man; Sam Obisanya caught between the game and his motherland, Nigeria; and ace striker Dani Rojas developing the yips. All this apart from the journey of the team to climb the leaderboard from the bottom. Kabir Khan’s women’s hockey team too had a glorious jumble of personalities like Komal Chautala and Balbir Kaur. But Ted’s Greyhounds need more colour.
The bodies and personal lives of women athletes intrude on their sporting careers in ways they rarely do for men. And that can be a goldmine for storytelling. In recent years, women athletes have been vocal on issues such as period pain, pregnancy, child care, post-partum depression, sexual harassment, online abuse, mental health, body image and financial insecurity.
A 2024 study of Women’s Super League (WSL) players showed that elite women footballers have reported cramps, fatigue, leakage anxiety and concerns about playing in white/light-coloured kits as barriers. Jessica McDonald, an American footballer, recalled being unable to afford childcare and having her son sit in a stroller while she trained. Icelandic goalkeeper Gunnbjörg Gunnarsdóttir kept her IVF treatment a secret for fear of being judged for prioritising motherhood. Spanish footballer Jenni Hermoso opened up about facing sexual harassment from senior football officials.
These are stories that are waiting to be told, to find space in mainstream cinema, not just to make audiences aware of their problems but also to acknowledge and appreciate the resilience of women athletes. Half of the world still believes that women’s sport is not sexy enough, or it doesn’t compare to men’s sport. It is stories like these that hold the power to change that perception. And by retelling a story written 20 years ago, Ted Lasso has under-utilised that opportunity and undermined its own capability.
Having said that, it is the third episode of a whole new season, and I hope the makers have added a little more greyness and complexity to the Lady Greyhounds as the story unravels.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)