An American college football coach takes over a Premier League club and brings a box of paperbacks. His assistant, Coach Beard, has a book in his hands in most of the four seasons, and it is usually about football until suddenly it is about fungus. Brendan Hunt co-created the show and plays Beard, which may explain who gets the good books. Ted started out in 2013 as a character in NBC Sports promos for its Premier League coverage, so this is the best-read ad campaign in history.
Built on the lists Book Riot, M.B. Davis and Books, Beans and Botany kept first.
Drop a frame, get a number. The first 100 become Founding Sleuths.
Seen something in S1 E2? Drop the frame The first 100 become Founding Sleuths.
Ted's welcome basket in London comes with a guide to Cockney rhyming slang. Book Riot notes the card is addressed to Coach Tim Lasso. The club got the name wrong and the dialect right.
Beard's second plane book is aimed at people coaching youth soccer, and it rode to London next to the tactics history. One book for the Premier League and one for the under-nines covers most of the bases.
Same flight, other seat. Ted has Kerouac and Beard has a history of football tactics, which tells you who did the homework. Beard went on to frame a diagram called the Inverting the Pyramid of Success on the office wall. The show named the season two finale after it.
The first book on the show is in Ted's hands before he has set foot in England. He is flying to London to coach a sport he does not understand, holding Jack Kerouac. Book Riot spotted it open to chapter 14, a solo trip into the wilderness, which is a lot of foreshadowing for a man in economy.
Book Riot has Beard reading a biography of Bob Paisley while Roy hears about Nate getting bullied.
Ted's book giveaway reaches Robbie, and his copy is Ransom Riggs. Coach Beard's Book Club, a fan podcast that covers every title, devoted an episode to this one. Nobody else got a book with this many creepy photographs in it.
The youngest player on the squad gets a novel about a child genius sent away from home and trained by adults for a war. Sam is a young Nigerian player a long way from home. Ted's book gifts are personalized to a degree that should worry people.
Ted's gift to his star striker is an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about a young man ruined by money and vanity. Book Riot reports Jamie unwraps it and throws it away. That's the fastest any player has ever confirmed a coach's point.
Ted hands out books to the squad and Roy gets Madeleine L'Engle, which he takes about as well as you would expect. He asks what A Wrinkle in Time even is, then reads it to his niece Phoebe anyway. Wikipedia credits the book with pushing him to take matters into his own hands.
A 1980s soccer handbook sits on Beard's desk with notes sticking out of it, and Book Riot says it is back in the season one finale. Only Book Riot places it in an episode, so this one waits for a timestamp.
Season two opens with Richmond stuck in a run of draws and Beard turning to a book about the psychology of winning. Book Riot puts it at the end of the first episode.
Book Riot has Beard reading Nick Hornby's football memoir in the Rainbow episode, the first of two Hornby books he gets through that season.
Beard reads Simon Kuper's tour of football and politics in The Signal. Book Riot and the book's own Wikipedia page both put it in that episode. Americans know it as Soccer Against the Enemy, which Beard would consider a downgrade.
Beard is reading About a Boy, cover turned toward camera, while he watches Nate bully Colin. Book Riot and the Coach Beard's Book Club podcast both place it in Headspace. Nick Hornby, twice in three episodes, so somebody in the writers' room has a favorite.
Keeley wants to watch Sex and the City in peace and Roy is next to her reading The Da Vinci Code and narrating it. That is the moment she tells him she needs some space. Book Riot says he reads it in more than one scene, so the man commits.
Book Riot spots Sam with a worn copy of A Wrinkle in Time in season two, the same title Ted gave Roy. Sam is reading during the stretch when he learns about Cerithium Oil. Roy's book again, which means either Ted ordered a box of them or Roy passed his copy on. L'Engle's heroine takes on a planet run by a giant brain that wants everyone to conform. Sam stood up to the club's sponsor earlier that season, so he already knows the plot.
Ted is in Dr. Sharon's flat and picks up a James Hollis book off her table, then puts it back face down. Book Riot catches it and a reader on Books, Beans and Botany names the same title. A therapist's personal copy of a midlife crisis book is a lot of information about your therapist.
Beard reads Merlin Sheldrake at his desk while Nate complains that Ted gets credit for his ideas. Beard answers with Suzanne Simard's research on trees sharing sunlight. Wikipedia's page on the book credits the scene to Midnight Train to Royston.
The season two finale is titled Inverting the Pyramid of Success, and Beard is reading the book in it. Book Riot says he is shown with it several times. M.B. Davis's Medium series on Beard's books saw it too. Wilson's tactics history, back for a second season. Beard reads it on the plane in the pilot and again in the episode named after it. That's the closest the show has come to a thesis statement.
Season three opens with everyone predicting Richmond will finish last, and Beard at his desk reading about a tiny Italian club that wasn't supposed to survive either. The Coach Beard's Book Club podcast calls it the first book on screen that season. M.B. Davis spots it open on his desk again in episode three.
Beard walks into the office and finds Ted holding Inverting the Pyramid. Ted says he is taking a peek at one of the strategy books Beard always has his nose in. Two seasons in, the head coach is reading up on the sport. Wilson's book makes its third appearance and its first in Ted's hands. Ted has coached a Premier League side for two seasons on vibes. He is cramming now.
Beard holds The Beckham Experiment in Big Week, and the episode closes with a dedication to its author. The Hollywood Reporter places it in episode four. M.B. Davis's recap of that episode calls it Beard's read for the week before. We're going with The Hollywood Reporter. If you have the timestamp, send it.
Jack meets Keeley for coffee and gives her a first edition of Sense and Sensibility signed by Jane Austen. Looper reports Jack also signed it, in blue marker, with Keeley, you go girl. Someone wrote in marker on a priceless book to flirt, and it worked.
In The Strings That Bind Us, Beard reads a mystery novel starring the basketball broadcaster Bill Walton. Books, Beans and Botany says Will Kitman has it first, then Beard.
An orange book sits unopened on Beard's desk, and M.B. Davis identified it as David Winner's history of Dutch football. Two episodes earlier Ted got his Total Football idea in Amsterdam.
Ted reads his son Henry the first Breakfast Club Adventures book at bedtime. M.B. Davis says it gets a better look than anything on Beard's desk that week. A reader on Books, Beans and Botany names the same title.
Near the end of La Locker Room Aux Folles, Nate comes by after walking out on Rupert, and Jade is reading Kafka on the Shore. Books, Beans and Botany and two fan lists agree on Jade and the book. Only M.B. Davis gives the episode.
The Coach Beard's Book Club podcast spotted Life of Pi on Nate's bookshelf in International Break.
M.B. Davis flags The Club as the other book featured in International Break, and a Bookshop.org list has Beard reading it in season three.
A season after quoting her, Beard is reading Suzanne Simard's memoir in International Break. The Mary Sue and Books, Beans and Botany both put it in his hands. He uses it on Nate again, still about trees sharing the light.
The series finale has Ted on a plane again, three seasons after The Dharma Bums, and this time he is holding Michael Pollan. Books, Beans and Botany and the Coach Beard's Book Club podcast both put it in So Long, Farewell. Beard served Ted a mushroom tea back in Sunflowers, so the reading list caught up with the plot.
A Bookshop.org list puts Johnny Tremain among Ted's childhood belongings in the season four premiere. Ted mentions in season two that his father read it to him.
In the second episode of season four, Rebecca asks a bookshop to save her a copy of anything by bell hooks, and The Persistent says she cracks it open afterward. A Bookshop.org list names the title as Feminism Is for Everybody.
The Film Gordon captioned a shot of Beard reading The Time Traveler's Wife in the Richmond offices, and a Bookshop.org list puts it in the same episode.
A Bookshop.org list has Beard reading Soccerwomen in episode four, in the season Richmond fields a women's team.
A Bookshop.org list has Beard reading Roger Bennett's memoir in Yes & Baby.
