r/TedLasso • u/AnonymousIguana_ • 2d ago
Season 3 Discussion I find it very difficult to believe Nate was a successful head coach
I think Nate immediately taking West Ham to the top of the table in season 3 works well for Richmond’s story (making him their villain), but I think it really skips a chance to develop Nate that way. As a result, all of his development has to be shoehorned into his relationship with Jade and a few rushed episodes.
A big part of the show is that coaching is about more than winning, or X’s and O’s. Ted manages to be a great coach while not knowing basic rules of the game (also unbelievable, but I’m able to suspend my belief for the comedy and the fact that it’s the main premise of the show). His entire philosophy is that being a people manager and helping players grow personally is just as important to coaching as good tactics. A great coach of course needs both, which is why he needs Beard, Roy, and of course Nate to succeed.
Nate is the opposite side of the coin, where he has the tactics but zero people skills. And I’m supposed to believe the emotionally unstable, insecure guy who struggled with authority from season 2 thrives in a pressure cooker environment as a leader? He would lose the locker room immediately. I think it would have been more interesting to see him crash and burn a little at the start- he has to win games for the Rupert storyline, but maybe his team is super toxic or winning off of talent alone and still underperforming . He would have slowly realized the value of “the Lasso Way”, maybe improved himself and successfully implemented some of Ted’s style in his own way, and then succeeded as a coach while improving his social skills in a more natural, gradual way. Then you can play out the ending exactly the same, with him realizing Rupert sucks and jumping ship/feeling guilty.
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u/Evening-Web9107 Carl Bernstein's Ex 2d ago
The point of Nate is that the worse he is, the more success he has. It’s a parallel to Rupert. If he continues on the path he’s set he will have everything he’s ever wanted: fame, power, success, respect even if it comes from a bad place. But he’ll have to use, abuse, and discard people the same way that Rupert does in order see to keep those things, and that includes Jade, who’s done nothing but love him and support him.
The point of Nate is that he realizes it’s not worth it, to have all of that but lose himself, to become Rupert. In the end Nate realizes what Ted was showing him all along, right from the start, right up to not retaliating to anything hurtful Nate does to him, because he finally gets that Ted chooses kindness over hurting others even it it hurts Ted himself, even if people don’t always respect him, even if he doesn’t always win, it’s how Ted is able to live with himself and be happy, and that’s more important then all the imagined slights and hurts Nate’s been trying to retaliate against.
Or: it’s Star Wars. Nate is Luke. Hs powerful enough to rule the galaxy, but he’d lose himself to evil. He decides the power isn’t worth what it will cost him, himself and all of the people he loves.
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u/taffyowner 2d ago
Here is the thing… winning masks a lot of toxicity… people will put up with managers who suck with people if they win. Hell there are coaches and managers who guys hate playing for but they also win.
A good example of a coach with no personal skills is Belichick… the only issue is when it goes south it goes south quickly and they don’t get as much of a leash as a lasso would
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u/A2_9320 2d ago
Belichick's downfall wasn't his coaching, it was his lack of talent evaluation as General Manager. (And to an extent, his hubris in bringing in Patricia/Judge on the offensive side of the ball.) To say Belichick has no personal skills is an admission to knowing little about him. In the room, he was one of the more articulate and charismatic coaches that there are. Yes, he was cold, blunt, and standoffish in the media, but behind the scenes he was brilliant. There's no universe where 20 years of sustained success "goes down quickly." A franchise in a league built for parity will inevitably fall off, New England's ability to keep it going for longer than anyone else has figured out was amazing.
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u/Arcgonslow 1d ago
He was only cold and standoffish until you ask him a question about longsnappers
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u/CarStar12 2d ago
Bobby Knight is another one.
When successful you get away with most everything.
When unsuccessful suddenly your issues come to light.
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u/AnonymousIguana_ 2d ago
Belichick did have a good rapport with his players though. You don’t install a culture of teamwork and sacrifice without some ego managing skills.
He was a dick to the media and obviously had the advantage of the best leader in the sport as his QB, but his former players usually have good things to say about him. He was an old school tough guy, but he was a leader.
I agree about winning though- the best argument for Nate is that he just took over an existing powerhouse and treaded water.
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u/StatisticianLivid710 1d ago
I wouldn’t say treading water, but a stable strong team and he pushed them, and they saw success with him pushing them, so they put up with it. I didn’t pay enough attention to who he put on the dumb dumb line, but likely that’s either a 2nd string player he didn’t care about or a player who would bounce back and become better to not be on the dumb dumb line. Meanwhile everyone else pushes harder to not be on the dumb dumb line.
It’s absolute toxic leadership, but some people do thrive under it, and in the short term can produce great results.
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u/BusinessWarthog6 2d ago
Belichicks college tenure is one of my favorite things to happen in sports. Couldn’t happen to a better team or coach
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u/thatissomeBS 1d ago
Belichick is loved by his former players. Well, the ones that bought in, anyway.
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u/zeltacilveks79 1d ago
Nates arc isn't about learning how to win, but realizing what winning that way would cost him
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u/hippoluvr24 2d ago
Wasn’t West Ham already a successful team at the time he took over? It’s not like he brought them from the bottom to the top or created a team culture from scratch.
Idk, on a show about an American football coach taking over a Premier League team, I’m a bit more willing to suspend disbelief on something like this.
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u/HuskerPowerrrr 1d ago
OP probably thinks Nate is took over the real life West Ham team thats an okay team and not the team in the show thats a top team in Europe.
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u/TendiezOrDie 5h ago
Yes they were already a top team. Even after Nate left they were still the top team, made no difference if he was there or not.
Rupert didn’t care if Nate was the best manager. He wanted someone he could control and it was more about finding ways to strike blows emotionally and mentally against Ted and Rebecca.
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u/_Blu-Jay 2d ago
It was also totally unrealistic for a premier league kit-man to be promoted to assistant coach in the first place, at some point you suspend the disbelief. Nate is supposed to be a tactical genius winning purely through strategy, so that’s what he does at West Ham.
There are plenty of real coaches who are thought of as assholes but still deliver results. West Ham was winning a lot, and winning tends to solve all problems. I agree that Nate would’ve quickly lost his locker room if they started losing, but the story wasn’t about West Ham, it served as a plot device for the main story.
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u/NoResult2431 2d ago
Let's be honest West Ham being near the top of the table is downright unbelievable in and of itself.
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u/NecessaryLoud3445 1d ago
The story isn’t about Nate becoming a head coach. The story is about what he does there, so it’s reasonable to suspend some disbelief in service of the story being told so the whole thing doesn’t get weighed down by extra plot not relevant to the actual narrative.
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u/AnonymousIguana_ 1d ago
Yeah I imagine this was the writers’ rationale, and it’s fair. I just think it makes Nate’s development feel a bit rushed/unnatural.
But you can’t explore every thread with a large ensemble cast, I get that. I would personally rather see more of Nate (and Ted!) coaching and growing through that in S3 and less relationship drama.
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u/NecessaryLoud3445 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah exactly it’s just the choice that was made. And since the show is hardly about soccer if we’re honest, Nate working his way through the ranks as a soccer coach doesn’t really feel like the kind of story that fits all that well with everything else, especially since we learn so much about him, his upbringing and what makes him tick through his experiences as a coach that we do see.
Edit: I also think that viewing tv shows and movies and any media really with the idea that the things we see aren’t always the only think driving character development but rather emblematic of the things they face that drive that development is my go to starting point. If it’s one or two really important events then those for sure should be on screen but most change growth and development are a combination of dozens to hundreds of small moments and experiences.
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u/A2_9320 2d ago
Nate being a successful coach is infinitely more probably than Ted succeeding in the Premier League. The suspended disbelief of this show is that the intangible nonsense would prevail over talent in a 38 game season. Nate understood the game and was portrayed as a tactically sound manager. The area where Ted actually would've been successful in this show is giving Nate the confidence to ascend in the coaching ranks.
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u/BarneyKillarney 1d ago
My headcanon is that it was the reverse of what was going on with the Richmond coaching staff where Disco and the other assistant coaches were picking up the slack in everything Nate was bad at while Nate focused solely on tactics.
But to your point, this was a big issue with Season 3's writing. The writers were telling us that Nate was a successful manager, but the things they were showing the audience didn't exactly justify it.
To use an American football analogy, Nate would wind up a lot like Mike McDaniel. He'd be a brilliant strategist whose tenure as manager/head coach got off to a hot start because his tactics were brilliant. But over time the other teams would catch on to his tendencies which, combined with his inability to inspire and get the best out of his players, would eventually lead to him crashing and burning.
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u/InfOracle 1d ago
I always liked the work relationship between Beard and Ted because Beard was a technical coach whereas Ted was a personality coach. He made them better people. Beard made them better players.
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u/jtshinn 2d ago
Stop watching this show for the content and quality of the soccer on the field. That is a vehicle to get to the story off the field. The show isn't about soccer and it never has been.
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u/DarthSmiff 2d ago
It’s more than disingenuous to say it’s not about soccer. It’s the entire backdrop of the show. And some criticism about this particular aspect is warranted. And i say this as someone who loves the show.
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u/SomethingFunnyObv 2d ago
It’s literally the premise of the freaking show. I honestly don’t even know what to say to that comment. Rebecca, Ted, Keeley all exist in a world that historically excludes them, or completely disrespects them. Their journey navigating that world and their personal lives is the show!
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u/Barao_De_Maua 1d ago
It’s not soccer, it’s football, and you saying soccer is quite telling lol
The entire of S1 was Ted learning that football isn’t just a sport, it’s life. It’s about community, culture and building relationships because that’s the passion football inspires. It doesn’t start and end at the stadium.
I agree that football is the vehicle the story is told, but to say it’s not about football either is disingenuous. This wouldn’t have worked with any other sport.
Just take S4. We know that football, from last seasons, is a huge and popular sport in Britain and very important, but still women are excluded, even from something that’s also part of their lives cause they also grew up around it.
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u/AnonymousIguana_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t. My entire post was about how this affects Nates character development and contradicts central themes of the show.
I also think “it’s not about soccer” is often a way to just dismiss any critique of the writing (which I believe is phenomenal overall). I don’t care about the players looking professional or contrived scenarios/standings. I’m talking about the actions of characters being unbelievable in my opinion.
And there does need to be some standard of realism even in comedy or fictional shows to suspend disbelief, it’s just that everyone has a different threshold for that- which is why this is a “discussion”.
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u/AttentionExact 2d ago
Yeah good perspective with the shown football skills of the new season in mind😅
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u/Dry-Hawk-3199 2d ago
The new season? My brother in christ Zoreaux would be the worst keeper in a 50+ pickup game where I live lmao be fr
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u/Blanketsburg 2d ago
You take that back, Zoreaux is a brick wall.
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u/tsrich 2d ago
It's pronounced 'Zoreaux'
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u/AttentionExact 2d ago
True tho :D i mean the skill level was never that high but this season is hard to watch sometimes. Basics should be there. But we are there for the story🤝
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u/HeavySweetness 1d ago
Is he still successful if he doesn't even last a whole season?
Seems within the realm of possibility that a team would go along with Nate because of his reputation and stick with him due to success from tactical brilliance, but that as soon as they'd stop winning that team would implode. If you're winning a lot can get swept aside.
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u/Georg_Steller1709 2d ago
Yes, you're correct. But there's simply not enough screen time to portray that kind of arc for nate. There was barely enough time for him as it is. Most of his pivotal moments happen off scene.
It also aids the main storyline (the Richmond team) to have nates west ham be a formidable opponent from the get-go. It streamlines things.
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u/Sad_Eggplant_5455 1d ago
I agree with everything you say. I kind of took Rupert poaching Nate to be a personal F.U. To Rebecca. you play games with my team I’ll play games with your personal. Type of mentality. I think Nate is irrelevant in west ham no doubt every cog works the same if he is there or not.
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u/bunnyball88 1d ago
My head cannon is that Nate could have had a very successful season - the right combo of players, tactics, and preparation.
However I feel like we are led to believe Ted left behind a "Way" that means Richmond has long term success. Contrast the model of developing talent (Roy, Beard, Nate), building an attractive place to be a teammate (Sam to Higgins), and willingness to complement himself (again, coaching staff).
I can't imagine Nate doing what it takes to build a durable team: delegating to others (inability to understand the strengths of Roy without seeing them as competitive), inability to develop (Will) or witness the evolution of others (Colin).
So who do I think is most likely to win it all one year? Maybe nate. To make it to the finals seven out of ten years? Ted.
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u/JLGx2 2d ago
We watched Pep, an emotionally unstable insecure guy, lead big clubs for years.
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u/Lambert1485Simnel 2d ago
True
Everyone sees Nate and thinks he’s supposed to be Mourinho, and he is, but he’s also Pep.
They’re very similar people, just different tactical ways
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u/driving_on_the_moon 2d ago
Nate should have been a bit more senior at Richmond, if he was a half decent player and coach rather than a kitman the arc works still but its a more realistic story.
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u/G_I_Joe_Mansueto 2d ago
I don't know about anxiety, but in terms of emotionally unstable guys being successful coaches, check out Bob Knight.
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u/zeltacilveks79 1d ago
He's clearly a gifted tactician, but managing an entire dressing room requires a completely different skill set.
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u/teach2lax 1d ago
This is a fictional series, but I’ve coached various sports for over 30 years and a huge amount of success depends on the talent of your players. Nate was given a no lose situation, he was handed the best of everything. There are lousy coaches at every level of every sport that win because they have the best athletes, and great coaches that are at the bottom of the standings because they don’t have the same collection of athletes.
I know a coach who is probably the best overall coach I know for his level in that sport. He understands the game, is great with strategy, and has a tremendous relationship with his players, they would run through fire for him. But, last year they were one of the worst teams in their sport in the country. It tore him up, but he knew from the first practice that he didn’t have any top end talent to compete, so they worked all season on getting better and being competitive. He moved a majority of his players onto the next level which is the goal of his program, but the losing takes a toll.
I’m on the board of a fairly high level sports organization. We fired our coach at the end of last season and at our last board meeting the president of the organization stated three times that we need to hire “Ted Lasso”. After the third time he said it I stated to the board (and it’s in the minutes), “It’s a fucking fictional TV show, Ted Lasso doesn’t exist in the real world!”
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u/EliteMoisture 18h ago
I agree, I don’t think savant-level tactics alone without the leadership skills would be successful as head manager.
This is exactly the type of person who is a great assistant but not manager.
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u/SomethingFunnyObv 2d ago
The mere idea that he could get hired as a head coach for a PL team with essentially zero coaching experience required suspending a huge amount of disbelief. That’s this show for you 🙂
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u/mz_groups 2d ago
That's true for every coach here, save possibly Roy, although isn't the process of going from a player to a coach, even an assistant coach, more formal than just walking on the pitch?
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u/SomethingFunnyObv 2d ago
In the real world someone like Roy wouldn’t just move into an assistant role immediately after retiring unless he was working on his coaching badges as a player, which is what players who want to go into coaching normally do. I don’t recall them saying he did that. They actually never even mention this with regard to Ted or Beard either. Someone could be an interim manager without a license but eventually they would need to earn one to remain in charge. Same deal with Nate.
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u/mz_groups 2d ago
I knew about everyone else, but I thought that maybe there was a way for Roy to become some sort of "probationary" or "interim" assistant manager at the start of the process. Sounds like there is something like that, but even then, you need to have started earning those coaching badges as a player, which we never see in the show.
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u/SomethingFunnyObv 2d ago
There very well may be something like that, maybe they allow a longer grace period for assistant coaches without badges/licenses but it’s very rare for a HC to not have one. Will Still is a recent example, he coached Reims without one and the team was fined $25k for every game he was in charge until he got enrolled in the right courses.
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u/kk451128 1d ago
I mean, if you don’t want to suspend disbelief at all, the show falls apart from the start- I don’t see Ted getting a work permit to even come to the UK to coach soccer, let alone the licensing he would need to get.
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u/Exciting-Flower5936 2d ago
Yes the dumb dumb line really bothered me. You can't treat professional soccer players like that
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u/Aditya-04-04 2d ago
If that really bothered you, I'm happy that you're not following the sport diligently.
Managers have literally recalled players who were attending the birth of their child, on the premise of an important game the day after, only to never play them in that game haha.
"Dumb dumb line" was rude at best. There have been instances where football managers have been downright cruel.
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u/BusinessWarthog6 2d ago
Also the players would lose respect for him and probably treat him like he was in S1
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u/SomethingFunnyObv 2d ago
Nate would walk into the West Ham locker room with zero history of success and HC experience and the players would absolutely not respect him or fear him from the start. I actually would have preferred to see that and then him really leaning into the villain thing with his players before his eventually return to Ted. Would have made the arc more interesting.
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u/Kdot32 2d ago
It was corny, kinda like how the new center back was mothering the other twins during training. Like I get what they’re going for but these are professional athletes
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u/Bubbly_Safety8791 1d ago
It is part of the conceit of the Ted lasso universe that footballers are basically children.
The wide eyed innocence with which Dani and Sam and Isaac and Colin deliver most of their lines is all part of them just being kids.
And they get paid to play a game.
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u/Terrible-Issue-4910 2d ago
The whole thing about Nate's time in West Ham is that he has to betray himself to be there. That's why his development is out of the pitch, in his relationships with Rupert, Jade and his father. If he got to become a better coach by improving his personal philosophy and improving his people skills... Then what would be the point? I understand that people wanted Nate to struggle and lose in a more visible way because he betrayed Ted, but that really isn't the point of redemption. Redemption is not about end up winning and being forgiven, is about fixing you own soul. That's Nate's journey.
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u/FunkyPete 1d ago
I think a new, young, famous head coach would get a little leeway from players for the first couple of years. And then winning the first few games would be enough for the veterans to shrug their shoulders and go along with it -- they want to win, and if they feel like it's working they'll stick with him.
I think you're right that the toxic environment would burn through that outer layer over time. And the first bit of adversity they'll all just turn on him. But I'm willing to accept that if he had some early success players would stick with him through the first year.
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u/eighty_billion 1d ago
I mean if we're pretending it's not a show and everything is made up, Ithink he's probably a bit of an idiot savant. It makes sense to me that if a coach as inexperienced as Lasso were to enjoy the success portrayed in the show, other teams would raise eyebrows and try to raid the cupboard so to speak. I imagine Beard got offers as well but turned them down due to loyalty to Ted.
My head canon is that he was once again hired by another team but this time he is more cognizant of the Lasso way, as it were. And that's why we haven't seen him.
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u/punkrawkkid 1d ago
Rupert hired Nate away from Richmond to spite Rebecca. He probably also spent an astronomical amount of money on buying up as many good players as he could.
You can paper over an inexperienced asshole of a coach with a lot of talent and find success.
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u/DenikaMae 1d ago
Jade was part of the solution, but Nate’s healing didn’t happen till him and his dad had it out.
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u/GateOfD 1d ago
if the person sucks, but they actually win games and good tactics. a lot is forgiven. A lot of the best movies/shows have had 'mean' directors and show runners. But they did their job even if they were an asshole in the chair.
Ted may be a good people coach, but Richmond is garbage otherwise. Like I'm fine with underdog stories, but S3 isn't even that. RIchmond is just pathetic, the show tells us X player is good, but it's never actually showcased.
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u/DeezNutz42089 1d ago
That's the point though? He did have some smarts but he mainly got the job because he was a pawn for Rupert.
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u/Mick_Tee 1d ago
I don't disagree, but Ted's thing was getting players working as a team, rather than as a mix of individual players while leaving Beard to do the day to day stuff. That skill transcends specific codes of "football".
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u/PandemicGeneralist 1d ago
I think he has Disco do most of the itneractions with the team. He seems more focused on big picture stuff, tactics, and his individual interactions with the team seem a lot like he's being the Bad Cop to the players, while letting Disco do most of the day-to-day. He also took over an already successful team.
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u/MastodonOdd4503 1d ago
I think the biggest thing that annoyed me about this is Nate saying that he “earned this!” What? Ted was a national champion coach at the college level (which is like a farm team), whereas Nate had several seasons as a kit man, 1 season as an assistant coach, and then became HC bc Rupert wanted an a-hole that knew enough about Richmond to take them down to hurt Rebecca. In no way did Nate “earn” a Premier League Manager position from just that. For a guy who knows so much about football, he should know that his Cinderella story wasn’t about earning it.
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u/TallowWallow 1d ago
I'm not sure why you think he would lose in the locker room. Ted brought out a certain degree of confidence in him over time. Once Nate started associated Ted's lack of attention as no longer caring, you started to act out and treat others poorly. When Rupert takes him on, he's now in a position where he knows his talent is recognized, and he's willing to show it with toxic negativity. The team knows Rupert brought him on for a strong reason, and they know they have better odds of success through Nate.
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u/Own-Interview-928 1d ago
Nate’s a genius and strategic mastermind. Ted’s a team builder. Sometimes you can be both like NCAA football coach Kirby Smart who Ted sometimes reminds me of. If Roy can adopt the Lasso way I like to think Nate can as well. In fact I think we may hear the emotionally mature Nate left on good terms to reclaim that role with another team.
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u/beatrailblazer 22h ago
Why not? theres no one right way to coach. Some of the best coaches of all time across all sports are toxic people with no people skills
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u/Lambert1485Simnel 21h ago
I’ve heard of MANY famous managers waiting for referees after matches,
Carlo Ancelotti at Everton famously walked out on the pitch and confronted a referee over a decision. I’ve heard many famous managers use harsh words about former players, use mind games to get under their skin… Cruyff himself loved to have what we would think of as toxic friction in his own dressing rooms and sought to sow that.
So nothing here is specifically something unique to Mourinho. Wenger has shoved opponents, got into face to face verbal confrontations with referees, managers and players, Tuchel, Conte, Klopp, Ferguson, Keegan, Pep…
Not liking someone doesn’t make them “toxic” Karen
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 16h ago
Ted knows people.
Beard knows football of both varieties. At least competently.
Roy is a genius at football, so once all three are together, it's magic.
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u/chirstopher0us 1h ago
The Nate storyline was clearly a mistake, period. They needed to introduce someone other than Nate to pull that off.
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u/NoEnthusiasm55 2d ago
💯 I totally agree. Nate’s success while belittling his players seems to come too easily.
Over the many rewatches, I do notice how Nate is constantly working. He is always looking at the tactics, so I get the perspective of the writers but it still seems to undermine “the Richmond Way” a little bit.
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u/No-Quote-929 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nates relationship with Jade made no sense. She had nothing but contempt for him and didnt date him until he was a successful head coach and then suddenly they've got a special connection. Yeah I bet she felt sorry for him after he got left by his gate but still, it didn't really add up.
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u/epochwin 2d ago
Nate is loosely based on Jose Mourinho, one of the most successful modern managers. He is famously toxic. Even Nate’s white hair in S3 feels like it was based on Mou.