SPOILERS are ahead for Ted Lasso Season 4’s latest episode, “Richmond’s Got Talent,” which is now streaming with an Apple TV subscription.
Season 4 of Ted Lasso is trying something new by focusing on AFC Richmond’s women’s soccer team. But that doesn’t mean some fun nods to the men’s team aren’t coming up. I had a blast with the reference to Cristo Fernández’s Dani Rojas in Episode 4, but there’s actually more to the connection than I had realized.
The Ted Lasso Nod To Dani Rojas
In Episode 4 of Ted Lasso's fourth season, Coach Lasso and company decide to do open tryouts for the women’s team in hopes of finding a replacement striker. And one of the hopefuls is Dani Rojas’s sister.
When she tells Coach Beard that the character who famously yelled “Football is life!” taught her everything she knows, he got excited about finding the team’s new striker in her. However, I was giggling when it was revealed that she can barely kick the ball. Instead, two other brand-new characters are added to the team, along with a former player Coach Chilton clearly has a rocky past with.
The BTS Fact That Makes It Even Better
As it turns out, the actress who plays Maria Rojas is the actual sister of Cristo Fernández! Her stage name is Paloma Cinco, so I wouldn’t have realized it off the bat, but it turns out her birth name is actually Paloma Fernández. In an interview with Deadline, Ted Lasso himself, Jason Sudeikis, spoke about casting her, saying:
I love when we do stuff like that. Like how we’ve had Jeremy’s [Swift] wife Mary playing his wife on the show. Whenever we have a love interest on the show, we encourage them to pick someone because they’ll have that natural chemistry.
No wonder Ted Lasso always has a grounded feeling to it that makes it seem like all the characters are real people. As he added:
So to have Cristo’s sister Paloma on the show, who we had all known personally… the two of them are just a joy to be around. And that joy remains with them as individuals. I love that she did it and that she did it with gusto. She was so funny and so sweet.
While we might have expected Cristo Fernández to appear himself, especially since Roy Kent is still in the show as the men’s coach, I love that Ted Lasso is spending more time with women than it ever has.
It’s a fun bit of fan service to make the connection, but for Ted Lasso Season 4 to not lean on its men’s team when that’s no longer the focus. I know I’ve been enjoying the mix of seeing old characters I’ve missed (like Juno Temple’s Keeley) and getting to know new ones – with my new favorite dynamic being between Ted Lasso and Alice Chilton.
You can continue to catch Ted Lasso Season 4 on the 2026 TV schedule with new episodes every Tuesday on Apple TV. I’m so curious what other surprises they have up their sleeves.
