Ted Lasso actor Cristo Fernández signs with El Paso Locomotive FC

Cristo Fernández turned the optimism of Ted Lasso into a real contract, signing with El Paso Locomotive FC after a two-month trial that ended with a spot on the USL Championship club’s 2026 roster. The move, announced by El Paso on May 12, came with league and federation approval still pending and terms undisclosed under club policy.

For El Paso, the signing is more than a novelty. Fernández is 35, from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and best known worldwide for playing Dani Rojas in the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso, a role that made a fictional footballer’s joy part of the show’s appeal. His arrival gives the club a recognizable face in a league where attention is hard won and where identity often matters as much as results.

Fernández spent the trial training regularly with the squad and even appeared in a preseason match against New Mexico United. El Paso head coach Junior Gonzalez said Fernández is “a great addition,” pointing to the attacking threat he adds and the leadership and passion he brings to the locker room. The club lists him as a forward for the 2026 season.

The signing also closes a circuit in Fernández’s own career. El Paso says he began playing at Tecos FC at youth level before injury pushed him away from football at 15. He later shifted into acting, eventually becoming one of the most recognizable football characters in recent television. Now he is trying to do something far less scripted: earn minutes in a professional league that is building its own audience outside the top tier of U.S. soccer.

That makes the deal symbolic, commercial and competitive at once. Symbolically, it connects immigrant ambition from Guadalajara to a club in El Paso, Texas, a border city where soccer identity often stretches across cultures and languages. Commercially, it gives Locomotive a story that reaches beyond regular USL circles. Competitively, the club still had Fernández in training long enough to judge whether the celebrity translated into utility on the field.

In that sense, the move fits the broader shape of lower-division American soccer in 2026: clubs are not only selling points and standings, but personalities, narratives and local allegiance. Fernández’s signing gives El Paso Locomotive FC all three.