Cristo Fernandez, who gained fame on football comedy series Ted Lasso for his \u201cFootball is life!\u201d mantra, has finally made his professional soccer debut.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old took the pitch for American second division side El Paso Locomotive on Sunday in the 79th minute of their clash against New Mexico United.<\/p>\n
Fernandez, who played Dani Rojas in the Jason Sudeikis-led comedy series from 2020 to 2023, was signed on a two-year deal by the Texas-based side in May, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the constantly upbeat nature of his character Rojas, it was an unhappy outing for Fernandez during the side\u2019s 2-0 USL Cup loss to rivals New Mexico United.<\/p>\n Fernandez received a yellow card for a foul on United goalkeeper Kris Shakes in the 87th minute.<\/p>\n Fernandez was seen as a rising star of youth football in his Mexican hometown of Guadalajara after spending time with in the youth ranks of former Liga MX side Tecos.<\/p>\n However, injuries in his early 20s soon derailed his footballing dreams.<\/p>\n His background on the pitch led to his inclusion in the cast of Ted Lasso, the AppleTV series in which Sudeikis plays a US high school gridiron coach tasked with turning around the fortunes of a fictional second division UK side.<\/p>\n In 2025 he started his real-life return to the sport with performance coaches and physical therapists, culminating in a 2026 trial with MLS\u2019 Chicago Fire\u2019s reserve side and then a subsequent trial with El Paso.<\/p>\n \u201cFootball has given me both the best moments, the sad moments,\u201d he told ESPN in May. \u201cI guess that\u2019s why, for me, football is life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristo Fernandez, who gained fame on football comedy series Ted Lasso for his \u201cFootball is life!\u201d mantra, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4621,138,140,139,300,739,2819],"class_list":["post-371069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-culture","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-football","tag-sport","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}