Believe: How Crystal Palace pulled off the Ted Lasso dream

Ted Lasso is the finest football show to be ever made. Everything about it is perfect and comes together including Ted’s Panglossian optimism, Coach Beard’s Nietzschean nihilism, Jamie Tarth’s evolution from twat to team man, Roy Kent just channelling Roy Keane, and obviously Dani Rojas’ football-is-life optimism. It’s the kind of show you go back to when you are feeling down, when the burden of life becomes too much. And at the heart of it is Believe: the notion that together you can overcome any obstacle. And now Ted Lasso’s giddy optimism has crossed from reel to real as Crystal Palace – the club that inspired AFC Richmond – beat Manchester City to win their first FA Cup title and their first major trophy since its foundation in 1905.



The Man City bankrolled by infinite oil money whose budget is £528 million more than Crystal Palace.
In a season where football felt more like finance, and goals came second to spreadsheets, Palace reminded the world that sometimes, belief does beat billions.

Now to the no-Premier League watcher, even the name Crystal Palace might sound ridiculous, like a druggie hang out where they sell crystal meth (as evidenced in Breaking Bad).

South London vs The System
This wasn’t just a cup final. It was England’s Game versus Football Inc..

Crystal Palace are what football used to be – local, loyal, loud. A stadium that creaks like your granddad’s knees. Fans who still boo referees in person instead of tweeting threats. A club run by fans who once literally saved it from liquidation. A place where a mascot named Kayla is a bald eagle, not a venture capital firm.

City? They’re the Apple Store of football. Sleek, perfect, bloodless. A club with more global brand managers than local fans. A team that has turned trophies into KPIs. And yet, the machine broke down. Not from a lack of code – but from a lack of soul.

Palace didn’t just beat City. They reminded us that the game still belongs to the boroughs, not the billionaires.

Dean Henderson and the Gospel of Chaos

Dean Henderson may have lived 10 lives in one match. First, a borderline handball outside the box that somehow didn’t get him sent off. Then, a penalty save – his fourth in eight attempts – followed by a reflex stop on Erling Haaland’s rebound. It was as if a bloke who used to be Manchester United’s third-choice keeper suddenly became Gandalf on the goal line: “You shall not pass!”

Palace fans sang “England’s No. 1,” and for once, it didn’t sound like drunk optimism. Henderson’s heroics weren’t just clutch – they were mythic.

Lassoism Lives


“It’s the hope that kills you,” mutter football fans like it’s scripture — a phrase passed down from grandfathers who watched England lose on penalties in black and white. But Ted Lasso took that defeatist mantra, chewed it up, and spat out something else entirely: Believe.

Crystal Palace believed.

They’d been here before — in 1990, when they came within a whisker of beating Manchester United. In 2016, when they led in the final and then danced their way into footballing purgatory thanks to Alan Pardew’s ill-fated jig. Both times, dreams dissolved like spilled beer at Selhurst Park.

But this time, it was different. Oliver Glasner’s Palace didn’t just play like underdogs. They played like spiritual insurgents — soaking up pressure like they’d rationed possession under wartime austerity, then unleashing attacks with blitzkrieg precision.

As Guardiola overthought, Palace held the line. As City prodded and passed and pirouetted, Palace waited — not passively, but patiently. And when Eberechi Eze volleyed that ball into the net, it wasn’t just a goal. It was an exorcism. Of missed finals, of financial near-death, of 119 years of being told to stay in their lane.

It was a scream into the void: We are not just here to survive. We are here to win.

Football’s Last Romantic

Forget NFTs and crypto sponsors. Forget VAR drama and brand activation zones. What happened at Wembley was something that hasn’t happened in football for a long time: a story that made you feel.

Crystal Palace didn’t just lift a trophy. They lifted a city. They lifted memories. They lifted the sport itself – dragging it, kicking and screaming, back from the abyss of soulless superclubs and oil-funded juggernauts into the arms of humanity.

Ted Lasso once said, “Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.”
And for 90 minutes – plus added time – the right thing was Crystal Palace.

They dared to dream. They dared to believe. And in doing so, they reminded the world that football, at its very best, isn’t about domination. It’s about defiance.

Believe.