Ted Lasso honours late football reporter Grant Wahl in heartwarming tribute

Sports journalist Grant Wahl played a part in developing the hit show’s third series

Ted Lasso paid tribute to longtime sports reporter Grant Wahl in its latest episode.

Wahl collapsed and died last year in Qatar, where he was covering the World Cup. His wife, Dr Celine Grounder, later revealed that Wahl died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm.

Ted Lasso returned for its third season on 15 March. The Apple TV Plus comedy series stars Jason Sudeikis as an American football coach hired to manage a British football team.

Episode four of season three – titled “Big Week” – concluded with a message in memory of the late journalist. “In memory of Grant Wahl,” appeared on the screen as the credits began to roll.

Eagle-eyed fans, however, will notice another tribute to Wahl earlier in the episode.

Brendan Hunt, who plays Coach Beard, is seen reading the reporter’s 2009 non-fiction book The Beckham Experiment, which chronicles David Beckham’s move from Europe to Major League Soccer.

After the episode aired, Dr Grounder posted on Twitter, thanking Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt and Brett Goldstein for the heartwarming tribute.

“It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe…” she wrote. “This episode means so much to me and my family.”

Hunt is also an executive producer on Ted Lasso. He previously said that Wahl played a role in developing the character of Trent Crimm (James Rance), a sports journalist with The Independent whom Sudeikis’s character develops a bond with.

In season three, Crimm leaves The Independent in order to write a book covering the fictional Richmond FC, much the way that Wahl had covered Beckham’s team, LA Galaxy.

“So we reached out to (Wahl) with a few questions, hoping he might have some time to give us some quick answers,” Hunt recently told IndieWire.

“He gave us voluminous responses to every single question that were so helpful. Putting the Trent story together, he was just so generous with his time. It’s a really, really terrible loss.”

Wahl had been an early fan of Ted Lasso, having interviewed the cast for his podcast in 2020.

He was a longtime football journalist, covering the sport in the US at a time when it was less popular than it is now.

“He was almost a missionary in that sense,” British football commentator Jon Champion previously told CNN. “He would travel around the globe, telling people to take American soccer seriously.

“If you ask any of the frontline European football journalists who their first port of call has been if they wanted a story in America, it would be Grant Wahl.”