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If Trent was honest with himself for a moment, he should have noticed earlier that something was different about Richmond’s new Coach. Most everyone in the press room, in all of Britain even, had labeled Coach Lasso as nothing more than some Midwestern American hick who had only accepted the position due to a missguided delusion of grandeur. All of this supplied by a room full of people who could scarcely point to Kansas on a map. Even so Trent did what he did best. He set a snare, and at just the right moment, moved to strike the new coach right where it was bound to hurt. When the room erupted with laughter, jeeres, and so many questions that he thought the new Coach might drown in them all, Trent was sure he had made a lasting cut.
But then some weeks later when Coach Lasso — Ted, as he so frustratingly insisted on being called — told Trent to his face while shoveling another spoonful of blistering Indian food into his mouth, that he didn’t care about winning, Trent finally understood that he didn't even land a glancing blow. After the ordeal Trent did his best not to stumble out of that establishment, full of all the information he could stomach. He drove home with a lingering ache in his chest he could not rightly attribute to heartburn. The moment he arrived at his flat Trent promptly wrote up his profile on the man in a flurry typically reserved for breaking news, and sent it off with not so much as a second glance.
Even hours later, as he lay alone in his bed, Trent could not push the meeting out of his mind. Ted had seemingly laid himself bare for Trent, either not caring, or conversely, highly aware that it was Trents job to pick apart his every word and action. Yet Ted had spoken with an undeniable earnestness about what he loved, how despite his ignorance in the way of football strategy or culture he wanted to give his all to Richmond. Worst of all, Trent had believed him — or at least that Ted had actually believed it. In the restaurant's lowlight Trent had seen an undeniable spark behind those warm, disarming brown eyes. For all Ted’s baffling quips and boyish enthusiasm, only an unobservant fool would mistake his genuine, ernest desire to help others as stupid naivety. Trent wondered if it wasn’t for this meeting if he would have been another such fool.
In Trent’s line of work, people did not tend to help others without some kind of personal gain. He didn’t run into many people he could demonstrably label anything close to “Pure Hearted,” particularly in the seedy realm of football. To believe such a person existed would only be setting themselves up for disappointment. All too often behind those too wide smiles and self-aggrandizing philanthropy there was a different game being played just beyond the curtain. It was Trents job to raise that curtain for the audience to see and if he had to, tear it off of it’s fucking rails.
He figured this only fed his desire to dissect all of Ted Lasso’s kind smiles and relentless optimism with an almost fetishitic intensity.