by Tim Gordon
AFC Richmond may be fictional, but few television sports teams have ever felt quite so lived-in. From the weathered corridors of Nelson Road to the locker room where a handmade yellow BELIEVE sign once hung above the coaches’ office, Richmond is more than the setting of Ted Lasso. It is the place where nearly every important idea in the series eventually comes home.
Known as the Greyhounds, AFC Richmond is based in Richmond upon Thames in southwest London and plays its home matches at Nelson Road Stadium, according to the Ted Lasso Wiki’s AFC Richmond guide.
Yet the Richmond audiences come to know isn’t defined by its record.
It’s defined by its people.
The fictional club provides the beating heart of Ted Lasso, which streams exclusively on Apple TV
Welcome to Nelson Road
Nelson Road Stadium, affectionately known by supporters as The Dog Track, is the physical heart of AFC Richmond.
The fictional stadium holds more than 25,000 supporters and contains nearly every location that has become synonymous with the series: Rebecca’s office overlooking the training ground, the locker room, the coaches’ office, the treatment room, the showers and the pitch itself.
When Ted Lasso and Coach Beard first arrive, Nelson Road immediately establishes how foreign this world is to Ted. He touches the grass, notices that it feels different and begins his education in English football almost from scratch. Moments later, Nathan Shelley orders the two strangers off the pitch before discovering they are Richmond’s new coaches.
That introduction establishes one of the show’s great contradictions.
Ted understands almost nothing about English football.
He understands people remarkably well.
Nelson Road becomes the laboratory where those two realities collide.
Rebecca Welton Takes Control
AFC Richmond’s modern story begins with Rebecca Welton.
Following her divorce from Rupert Mannion, Rebecca takes ownership of the club her former husband loved. Initially, Richmond isn’t a passion project. It’s an instrument of revenge.
She fires manager George Cartrick and hires Ted, an American college football coach with no experience managing association football, believing his inevitable failure will destroy something Rupert treasures.
Instead, Ted begins changing the organization.
More importantly, Richmond begins changing Rebecca.
Her relationship with Ted gradually moves from manipulation to trust. When Rebecca finally admits that she hired him to sabotage the club, Ted forgives her. That act changes the trajectory of their relationship and, by extension, AFC Richmond itself.
Richmond stops being the battlefield of Rebecca’s failed marriage and becomes something she genuinely wants to protect.
The Locker Room Becomes the Heart of Richmond
Some of Ted Lasso’s most important victories don’t happen during matches.
They happen in the locker room.
When Ted arrives, Richmond is talented but fractured. Personalities compete for oxygen. Jamie Tartt possesses enormous ability but little understanding of team responsibility. Roy Kent is the aging veteran confronting the end of his playing career. Sam Obisanya is searching for confidence. Nate exists on the margins of the organization.
Ted begins changing the environment through small gestures.
He repairs the showers. He listens. He asks questions. Most famously, he hangs the handmade BELIEVE sign above the entrance to the coaches’ office. The Ted Lasso Wiki notes that Coach Beard also places his “Inverting the Pyramid of Success” diagram on the wall, visually establishing the two philosophies guiding Richmond’s new coaching staff.
Beard understands football.
Ted understands belief.
Together, they begin rebuilding the club.
Richmond ‘Till We Die
Ted’s greatest accomplishment at AFC Richmond isn’t tactical.
It’s cultural.
One of the earliest examples comes when the team attempts to cleanse the supposedly cursed treatment room. Players sacrifice objects carrying personal meaning, gather around a burning container and eventually sing “Richmond ‘Till We Die.”
The scene represents the first time the fractured collection of personalities truly feels like a team.
That idea becomes fundamental to Richmond.
Players arrive and leave. Coaches change roles. Careers end. The club experiences relegation, promotion, winning streaks and painful defeats.
The community remains.
Even Richmond’s supporters become characters within the larger story. They heckle Ted, question his decisions and repeatedly call him a “wanker,” yet their fierce loyalty reflects how deeply the club is woven into the identity of Richmond itself.
The Dog Track doesn’t merely host football matches. It belongs emotionally to the people surrounding it.
From Relegation to Belief
Ted’s first season doesn’t end with a championship.
Richmond is relegated following a defeat against Manchester City.
For a conventional sports story, relegation might represent failure. Ted Lasso uses it differently.
Rebecca refuses to fire Ted. Instead, the two begin looking toward promotion and the possibility of rebuilding together. Richmond subsequently fights its way back into the Premier League, completing one of the show’s most important transformations.
The club that Rebecca once wanted to destroy becomes something worth fighting for.
The coach hired to fail becomes essential to its identity.
And players who once functioned as competing personalities gradually become a genuine community.
The People Who Built Richmond
Richmond’s identity is inseparable from the people who pass through its doors.
Ted changes the emotional culture. Beard provides tactical intelligence and unwavering loyalty. Roy evolves from veteran captain to coach. Higgins becomes far more than an executive administrator, emerging as one of the club’s moral centers.
On the pitch, players including Jamie Tartt, Sam Obisanya, Dani Rojas, Isaac McAdoo, Colin Hughes, Jan Maas and Thierry Zoreaux each contribute something different to Richmond’s personality. The Ted Lasso Wiki catalogues a sizable roster of players and officials who have represented the fictional club throughout the series.
Keeley Jones becomes equally important away from the pitch, helping transform how Richmond presents itself to the world while developing a close friendship with Rebecca.
Even characters who eventually leave remain part of the club’s emotional history.
Richmond remembers its people.
A New Era for AFC Richmond
By the end of the original three-season journey, AFC Richmond has become almost unrecognizable from the dysfunctional organization Ted inherited.
Roy Kent assumes responsibility for the men’s team, while Rebecca makes a particularly meaningful decision about the club’s ownership by making shares available to Richmond supporters.
Then Keeley presents Rebecca with another idea:
A women’s team.
That possibility becomes the doorway into the next chapter of Ted Lasso. The current season brings Ted back to Richmond to coach a second-division women’s football team, expanding the meaning of AFC Richmond beyond the men’s side that originally defined the series.
The challenge is different, but the underlying question remains familiar.
Can a collection of individuals become something larger than themselves?
More Than a Football Club
AFC Richmond works because Ted Lasso never treats the club merely as scenery.
Nelson Road absorbs the history of everyone who passes through it.
Rebecca enters wanting revenge and discovers purpose. Roy arrives at the end of one career and discovers another. Nate moves from kit man to coach, loses himself and eventually begins finding his way back. Players become leaders. Strangers become teammates. Colleagues become family.
And Ted, who crosses an ocean to take a job he was never expected to succeed at, discovers a community that changes him as profoundly as he changes it.
That is ultimately what makes AFC Richmond special.
The victories matter. The promotions matter. The trophies matter.
But Ted Lasso understands that the real measure of a football club is what happens between those moments. It is found in the locker room after a devastating defeat, in Rebecca’s office during an impossible decision, in the stands filled with supporters, and on a training pitch where someone is given another opportunity to believe in themselves.
AFC Richmond begins Ted Lasso as a struggling football club.
It becomes a community.
And perhaps that was the point of BELIEVE all along.
Explore more of AFC Richmond, episode recaps, character profiles, Season 4 coverage and original analysis in TheFilmGordon’s complete Ted Lasso Series Hub.
