[This story contains minor spoilers for Ted Lasso Episode 4 “Big Week””s third season. ]
In the April 5th episode of Ted Russo , Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) holding a copy of Grant Wahl’s book The Beckham Experiment , telling the story A soccer superstar has decided to make the jump from Europe’s top league to MLS’ LA Galaxy. When that scene was filmed, it was intended to be an Easter egg because most of Beard’s reading choices were (earlier this season, he and Ted (Jason Sudeikis) flipped through the football strategy book Inverting the Pyramid ).
However, by the time the episode premiered on Apple TV+, the nod to Wahl had turned into a tribute. 1235281933 Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm while covering the 1235281933 Men’s World Cup in Qatar, the program Dedicated the episode “The Big Week” to him and included a title card in the end credits.
Hunt, Ted Lasso , told The Hollywood Reporter Wall is a fan of the series – he helped the writers craft an elaborate storyline involving Trent Crim (James Lance) writing a book about AFC Richmond, and superstar Zava (Maximilian Osinski) arrival.
“When we knew we were going to embed Trent’s storyline into the team, we thought of the journalists who had already done that – John Feinstein comes to mind [because he book The Dying Season , about Indiana University’s basketball program], and Grant. Specifically, because Grant’s book is about football, but it’s also about The arrival of a superstar and a change in David Beckham’s culture, we’re going to him right now.”
As the writers began to unravel Zava’s story, Sending Wahl a list of questions about how the arrival of such a legend would affect the team, “hopefully he’ll have time to come up with some answers,” Hunt said. “In what I now know to be a typical generosity of his time, he wrote long, detailed, valuable answers to all of our questions. He was a huge help.”
Hunt and Wahl later spent time together when Wahl covered the US Women’s National Team’s match against England in October . “On the way to the airport, he came to Richmond,” Hunter recalls. “He came to my house, met my family, I showed him around Richmond, we had a great day talking about football. Like everyone, we are all devastated and affected by his passing. Continue to pay homage to him Paying tribute is something we feel obligated to do.”
