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Ted Lasso is reusing Chak De! India plot in 2026. It is 20 years too late

I am not criticising Ted Lasso for borrowing from an Indian superhit. My grouse is that even two decades later, the makers chose to show cliques as the pain points among women athletes, and insolent men as tools to unify them.

The new season of Ted Lasso seems to have borrowed more than a few cues from the 2007 Bollywood film Chak De! India, where Shah Rukh Khan as coach Kabir Khan steers the Indian women’s hockey team to a World Cup victory. Jason Sudeikis, who plays Ted, is building the women’s football team for Richmond. 

Of course, SRK and Sudeikis as coaches are very distinct. But the problems riddling the women’s football team in Ted Lasso are the same as those with Khan’s hockey team two decades ago. Funnily, the solutions also take a strikingly familiar route. Hard to believe that evolution pressed pause for 20-odd years. 

Let me illustrate. The biggest challenge that coach Kabir Khan faces is to unite a fragmented team — there is the old guard led by Bindiya Naik, who was at odds with freshers like Priti Sabharwal, Mary Ralte and Molly Zimik, who refused to fall in line. Khan tries to unify them, even at the cost of making himself the enemy, but fails. 

Cut to the iconic scene, shot at a McDonald’s outlet in Connaught Place in Delhi. A bunch of rowdies eve-tease the........

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