It all feels a long way from Hollywood.
Nestled between a petrol station, a supermarket and rows of terraced houses in one of the more deprived corners of London, Selhurst Park – the home of Crystal Palace Football Club – is an unlikely setting for one of America’s most popular television shows.
Yet when the makers of Ted Lasso, the Apple TV series about a fish-out-of-water soccer coach, were wondering which stadium to use as the home ground for the fictional AFC Richmond, an underdog club valiantly scrapping against English football’s elite, they could hardly have chosen a better spot.
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Selhurst Park is what its supporters would call a ‘proper football stadium’. Its critics — and particularly visiting supporters whose view of their side is almost certainly going to be blocked by a TV gantry, a pillar, or possibly both — would be less generous. But what it lacks in modern facilities it makes up for in character, particularly in an era when so many top-flight clubs play in identikit grounds.
One side of the stadium, the Main Stand, is as old as the ground itself, which celebrates its 100th birthday next year; its opposite number, the Arthur Wait Stand, was considered state-of-the-art when it opened in the 1960s; one end, the Whitehorse Lane Stand, is backed onto by a Sainsbury’s supermarket; while the largest stand, the Holmesdale Road End, which looms over the rest of the ground, is also the most modern. It was built in 1995.
Selhurst Park, built in 1924, is a hodgepodge of styles (Photo: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)The ground may be dilapidated — and, with a capacity of just 25,486, cramped by Premier League standards — but its atmosphere and locale, in an area which has stubbornly resisted gentrification, are what attracted the makers of Ted Lasso to use it as Nelson Road, the home of AFC Richmond.
“One of the main stipulations was we had to shoot it in London so it was authentic,” Ted Lasso co-producer Bill Lawrence told the Palace website in 2020. “We had to find a Premier League team that would let us use their facilities and what we would base our team on: a local, community team as opposed to any of the big juggernauts.”
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Selhurst is certainly a world away from the glass and steel superstructures that host Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur in north London, or the plush surrounds of Chelsea and Fulham to the west. You do not queue to enter Stamford Bridge with the smell of jerk chicken wafting across a turnstile stationed opposite a second-hand car dealership.
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South Norwood, the area which hosts Selhurst Park, also feels very different from leafy Richmond, the home of Lasso. Yet there is no question that Selhurst embodies the community spirit Lawrence was looking for when he and his team were scouting for locations.
Tourists from Oklahoma visit the Prince’s Head pub in Richmond, the real-life Crown & Anchor from Ted Lasso (Photo: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Corporate facilities are minimal (certainly by Premier League standards) and the ground regularly hosts the Palace for Life Foundation, the club’s charity arm, which works to improve the lives of people across south London. Many of the club’s fanbase are, or were, locally based. Given Palace have yet to win a major trophy in their 117-year history, glory-hunters have come to the wrong place.
“I used to dream about being in one of those houses opposite the Arthur Wait Stand — you come out your door right into the turnstile,” says Rebecca Lowe, the host of NBC’s Premier League coverage and a Palace supporter. “Ted Lasso is all about the authenticity of English football and they’ve chosen perfectly with Selhurst.
“Selhurst is accessible, it doesn’t have the glamour but it’s real life. Palace are a rooted, earthy club and that’s what the message of Ted Lasso is all about: honest, open, not perfect. It wouldn’t have had the same effect with AFC Richmond at somewhere like Tottenham.
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“If Richmond were playing there or at the Emirates it would be this very human character in Ted Lasso in a multi-faceted, glamorous stadium. It just wouldn’t fit. That’s not what it is about. Selhurst and Ted Lasso fit because they’re both very real and very rooted, earthy and proper, authentic.
“This stadium is cheek-by-jowl to the houses on those surrounding streets and a manager (in Ted Lasso) cheek-by-jowl to the fans. One reflects the other.”
Selhurst Park backs onto terraced housing (Photo: Eddie Keogh/Getty Images)That authenticity was aided by utilising the knowledge and familiarity of British contributors to the show, one of whom, the actor Phoebe Walsh, grew up in a household that held season tickets at Palace.
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Lawrence and his team still had to offer Palace a sweetener to convince them to let them film at the ground, however.
“We told those folks what we were looking to do and said: ‘Look, our team will be an imaginary team and if we shoot in your stadium, Crystal Palace will kick our butts in the first game’,” Lawrence said. Sure enough, Palace win Lasso’s debut in charge of Richmond 4-1.
AFC Richmond’s red and blue colours echo those of Crystal Palace (Photo: 27th Annual SAG Awards/Getty Images for WarnerMedia)There were clearly limits to how much the show’s creators could change about Selhurst when it came to filming: playing in a stadium dominated by red and blue shaped the decision of what colour kit Richmond would play in, for example.
Other aspects of Nelson Road will seem very familiar to Palace fans, albeit with a few tweaks: the wording built into the seats of the Holmesdale Road End – ‘Palace, Eagles!’ – is replaced by ‘Grey, Hounds!’ in the show.
Crystal Palace fans in the Holmesdale Stand create a tifo paying homage to their origins (Photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)Palace have also sought to capitalise on the increased interest in Selhurst Park from Lasso devotees. Take the official stadium tour and you will come across a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Ted in the manager’s office, with an AFC Richmond shirt and the famous ‘Believe’ poster on the wall. It is presumably moved aside when Roy Hodgson, Palace’s actual manager, requires the room on matchdays.
Emmy McMorrow runs an unofficial Ted Lasso tour, taking in many of the show’s most notable locations around Richmond, around an hour’s drive from Selhurst Park. She has plans to launch a tour that will include a visit to the stadium. “It’s in the main episodes of the show so it definitely has (raised the ground’s profile),” she says.
Since starting the tour in July, she says only one person has been British, which in some ways reflects the lack of cut-through in the United Kingdom for the show. Other fans are getting ahead of the curve and buying tickets to Palace matches simply because they want to watch a game at Nelson Road. “A lot of people who come on the tour are already going to a football match and are football fans anyway,” McMorrow says.
Met this lovely couple at the footy yesterday. Made the pilgrimage to Selhurst Park – FROM CINCINNATI – because they love #TedLasso and wanted to see where it’s filmed. Now Palace fans for life with no idea of the pain and suffering that involves. pic.twitter.com/CvjqwFa2jo
— Chris Tilly (@TillyTweets) April 2, 2023
In the Premier League, there are few grounds like Selhurst any more. Only Everton’s Goodison Park — built in 1892 and also renowned for its raucous atmosphere — can truly compare, but that is due to be demolished next year as the club move to a new facility in Liverpool’s docks. Once that happens, or possibly before if Everton lose their battle against relegation, Selhurst Park’s heritage status would be unique in the top flight.
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Even here, progress cannot be stalled. Palace have plans to replace the Main Stand with a vast new structure that will also nod to the club’s heritage — a glass frontage shaped as a pair of wings, the design would be a reminder of the club’s original home at The Crystal Palace, a monumental glass building that hosted London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 and the first World’s Fair — and the club’s nickname, the Eagles.
It would change the nature of Selhurst Park for good, with more corporate hospitality seating and probably less of that famed atmosphere: at the moment, fans in the Main Stand can make a din by stamping their feet on the wooden flooring. There would be none of that in the new stand, even if the seats would be comfier.
For all its faults, this is a stadium cherished by Palace fans and the ideal home for a club rooted in its community, whether that is Palace in real life or AFC Richmond in Ted Lasso.
Lowe sums it up: “Palace are a bit of a yo-yo club, with a real connection to the people in and outside of it. They couldn’t have chosen a better club.”
(Top photo design: Eamonn Dalton)
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