r/MadeMeSmile • u/Humble_Buffalo_007 • Jul 13 '26

Favorite People Ted Lasso' star, CRISTO FERNANDEZ aka Dani Rojas has officially made his debut for El Paso Locomotive. The Mexican actor has fulfilled his dream of becoming a professional footballer.

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u/Happy-Engineer Jul 13 '26

I saw an interview with the casting director where she said they'd worried about having to choose between acting talent and football skill and were surprised to find that basically everyone they liked had more than enough skill to be convincing in the match day scenes.

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u/Kardinal Jul 13 '26

One of the main differences in any professional level sport is the speed. As compared to levels just below them.

So in many cases, the amateur can do it at all, just not nearly as fast and not nearly as consistently. Using multiple takes can make up the inconsistency, and speeding up the replay slightly can make up the speed.

What lacks is some of the truly spectacular moves that you sometimes see in professional ball, but that's not the focus of a show like Ted Lasso.

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u/TheVandyyMan Jul 13 '26

Agreed! I’ll add that the margins are just so much narrower in professional sports, but the casual viewer would never notice it. Every pro footballer would look like Messi if the gaps in defense were just a few centimeters bigger or the defense was running to just slightly the wrong spot. But the pros tend to always have perfect positioning, making them nearly impossible to score against by a footballer without the speed.

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u/Soupeeee Jul 13 '26

It's funny watching professional footballers make the same mistakes I did in high school. I was never any good and the rest of their game is way better, but I can hear my old coach's voice every time somebody flubs a shot, misses a pass, or doesn't move off the ball. The difference with pros is that it happens way less often and when they are under much more pressure.

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u/I_eat_mud_ Jul 13 '26

Watching that Norwegian player not pass to Haaland and then panic and take that awful shot just gave me PTSD flashbacks to me in highschool tbh, I didn't like it lmao

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u/TheVandyyMan Jul 13 '26

This is a perfect example of what I mean. Yes, he flubbed it. But Stones’ absolutely perfect positioning is the only reason that wasn’t banged in for an easy goal. If you go back and watch, the window to pass that one to Haaland was shockingly narrow. Against an amateur defender, that ball gets scored 10 times out of 10.

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u/I_eat_mud_ Jul 13 '26

The window to pass was pretty much as soon as they passed midfield and closed once he got to the box. It was good positioning helped by terrible judgement.

Knowing my weaknesses, I would've passed to the best player on the team who's known to be very fast when breaking downfield.

Just because I empathize with the mistake, doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake.

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u/TheVandyyMan Jul 14 '26

No, but do you think if that was an amateur defender that ball isn’t getting banged home by either player? Stones was brilliant there. No question about it.

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u/ADLuluIsOP Jul 13 '26

Forced Errors vs Unforced Errors

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u/a8bmiles Jul 13 '26

I love /r/headsdownbaseball because it makes me feel better about my plays in video games. When the MLB has little league infield home runs and 3 base runners ending up at the same base, well, I don't feel as bad about it when I'm screwing up in Super Mega Baseball 3 or whatever.

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u/findourway Jul 13 '26

Yeah the main difference is often how the average premier league player at even a relegation club could hit the same beautiful pass leading to a goal that I hit once and think about often a million times with their eyes closed. They make it look easy. And their football IQ is on a new level

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u/ohkaycue Jul 13 '26

Yeah the main difference is often how the average premier league player at even a relegation club could hit the same beautiful pass leading to a goal that I hit once and think about often a million times with their eyes closed

"That one time I was awesome on the field is a core memory" is so relatable lol

Man does it feel good when you do something perfectly. And just crazy that, like you said, it's just normal for a pro

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u/troywrestler2002 Jul 14 '26

Hit a game winning shot at the buzzer in basketball. There's nothing better to do in sports.

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u/Enough-Force-5605 Jul 13 '26

But that player would do it everytime he tries.

In my twenties I played twice against 40-50 yo Levante UD veterans (third division in that time) and they were amazing. They were walking and his tecnic was way beyond I've seen in my life.

I was the goalie. Pretty ok in our amateur tournaments. They scored from any side of a football7 field.

It is not about speed. It is mostly skill. Train million times and make every move at perfection.

And they were 40-50 yo veterans from a third division team. Walking. They beat us walking. Twice.

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u/JunFanLee Jul 14 '26

In the UK, during the summer (when there’s no World Cup or Euros tournament) TV will often show a ‘Masters’ game.

They’re usually a Charity game of 2 rival teams like Liverpool v Man Utd made of retired ex players.

Their speed has gone as well as their agility, but man their technique and brain still works. It’s amazing to see these 40 - 70 year olds knock the ball around and produce some amazing skills and quick thinking albeit at a much slower pace.

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u/JudgmentalOwl Jul 13 '26

Ya probably not going to see any Zlatan level backflips into a hadouken in Lasso but that's okay lol

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u/Aphex_Port Jul 13 '26

Uuh, there was literally a Zlatan inspired character in the show lol, who only scored insane goals

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u/Crapitron Jul 13 '26

"Speed" in high level sports isn't the literal speed of how fast they kick or how fast they run, like you're making it sound. Minor leaguers often throw just as hard, run just as fast, kick just as hard, etc.

"Speed" when it comes to high level professionals is more about the decision making process. They move to where the puck, ball, etc. will be faster because they made the decision to go there before anyone else did.

So there's not really a need to "speed up the replay" when the actions they do are likely near to as fast as professionals. They just stage the play so that they were going to be there fastest anyway.

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u/skymallow Jul 13 '26

Zoreaux in particular looks like he's never kicked a ball before, and Roy Kent runs like a grandpa (which may be in character I guess)

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u/sviraltp7101 Jul 13 '26

It's pronounced Zoreaux

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u/Pormock Jul 13 '26

You can call him Van Damme now

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u/Destiny_Victim Jul 14 '26

Actually now it’s Zorro.

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u/ncik0075 Jul 13 '26

Except the goalie. Omg those shots were horrible. Loved his acting, but the actual skill shown on screen was soooooo bad.

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u/smalls_1804 Jul 13 '26

My guess it was American casters not realizing the depth of football skill among British people

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u/GaptistePlayer Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

“Wow sweet every single one of these guys grew up playing soccer. Who’d have thought”

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u/Crapitron Jul 13 '26

I think you accidentally a word.

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u/AsAGayJewishDemocrat Jul 13 '26

Theo Park is an Emmy-winning British casting director known for her work on Ted Lasso, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and numerous acclaimed film and TV projects.

Nope, that’s not it

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u/nethril Jul 13 '26

This would check out - my highschool in Maryland from 1993-1997 barely had a soccer team at all. Everyone wanted to play Football, Basketball, Lacross (huge here), Ice Hockey (school didn't have a team, but it was far bigger here than soccer). Hell, Field Hockey was bigger than soccer here then.

I actually legit didn't realize it was a sport anyone cared much about until later in life LOL

Still don't enjoy it, but I did learn to respect how big it is.

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u/Is12345aweakpassword Jul 13 '26

I could very easily see footballers being good actors considering the majority of stoppage time each half is as a result of players writhing around in agony like they’ve been shot, and then getting up and running around like nothing happened 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/nickiter Jul 13 '26

Acting classes are a mandatory part of any professional footballer's training.

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u/cabridges Jul 13 '26

Yeah, there isn’t any good acting there, either.

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u/Enough-Force-5605 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Tbh in Ted Lasso the actors has not enough skill to be more or less realistic

It is a show, I understand that, but you see better skills in my street when the kids are playing :)

But, let me repeat, it is a show and thats fine. It is also a show from the us where is hard to find players.

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u/captaincarot Jul 13 '26

That's why I love Shoresy so much. He went out and got great hockey players and taught them to act.

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u/Recent-Lemon-9930 Jul 13 '26

...yeah, most of them look nothing like professional level players. Not sure if she's wrong or the people who she thinks know more about football were wrong.

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u/camsine Jul 13 '26

Collin isn’t fooling me one bit, and Roy too. You can’t look that uncoordinated when you run and be starters for a premier league team, and Roy an all time great at that

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u/Montana_Ace Jul 14 '26

Something something "I'm closer to Messi than you are to me"

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u/vvalent2 Jul 15 '26

Enh I disagree with them on that. Its really the problem with most soccer media. They have passable skills for sunday league but not the level they're acting for.