(very mild spoilers ahead for Ted Lasso, if you care)
Ted Lasso is a wonderful television show. The third season recently started and I'd highly reccomend it to football fans and non-football fans alike. It follows fictional football team AFC Richmond, led by American, Ted Lasso, who is initially hired possessing zero football experience.
The show also features the character 'Roy Kent' played by the amazing Brett Goldstein. Roy is modelled off of real life pundit and former midfielder Roy Keane, with both demonstrating a gruff, tough and angry persona on and off the field.
Kent's backstory involved him captaining a Chelsea team that won the Champions League, and supposedly remaining as a club legend for several years. Episode 2 of the third season sees AFC Richmond travel to Chelsea for their Premier League opener, and a banner is displayed in the stadium that reads 'They don't make them like Roy anymore'
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| Source: Ted Lasso (Apple TV) |
Now, to the average non-football supporter, there would be no issues with that. A touching message of support, and one that made Roy Kent in the episode (somewhat uncharacteristically) stand to applaud the fans as a reaction. Plus, with a lot of the areas, like the fans and pitches mostly CGI, it helps to add a bit of realism to the scene by using banner stylings that might be commonly displayed at the ground.
To a Chelsea fan like myself, this banner becomes recognisable, as the banner has in fact been edited from a real life Chelsea FC supporters banner, one that has been displayed at Stamford Bridge for several years now. The real banner reads 'They don't make them like RAY anymore' which references former Chelsea player and assistant manager Ray Wilkins, who sadly passed away in 2018.
So, as a Chelsea fan, aware of Ray's enormous impact on the club, what were my thoughts about this?
To be honest? I didn't mind.
It never crossed my mind that something like this would cause disrespect to Ray or what he had done. Additionally, as a fan of the show, I thought it was a reveal that made sense in context and to the characters. Roy Kent in the first season is introduced as a legendary footballer, Ted even tells him "you've had a heck of a career" when the two first meet.
It would be no surprise that on Roy's first return to Chelsea since retiring as a player and joining Richmond's coaching team, the fans would organise something like this.
Chelsea's fans on Twitter are some of the worst I've seen them in recent years, so much so I tend not to follow anything Chelsea over there, as a lot of it is cutting and hurtful. Their reaction to this was strange to me.
Blame was immediately thrown on the ownership and Todd Boehly. Fans asked him how he could allow for this to happen. On his personal twitter, Boehly clarified that "the deal with Apple was struck in the first quarter of 2022", before the American took over ownership of the club, while also extending an apology to any Chelsea fans who may have been upset by the scene.
Ray's son, Ross Wilkins, also came to the defense of Boehly with a response essentially brushing off the entire situation by saying "All this is TV" and that it didn't have anything to do with the real life legacy created by his father.
It seems that at the moment we're far to quick to jump on the new ownership for issues like this. Furthermore, as a result of the ownership statement as well as a clarifying statement by Wilkins' son, is this really a massive issue? Ted Lasso is a fictional show and I am sure that no harm or disrespect was meant in any way. I could also talk about our treatment of Graham Potter, too, who even after leading us to a streak of wins and turning our losing form around for now, fans will still want to seek criticism on every little thing, all the way down to the things he repeats in press conferences, like this isn't the case for a good portion of other managers. It's shameful.
Props to Todd for hopping on swiftly to clear things up, and hopefully stuff like this doesn't occur in the near future.