Cristo Fernandez is back on a professional soccer field. The actor who became known to many as Dani Rojas on Ted Lasso is now rostered and playing for El Paso Locomotive in USL, a return he says still feels hard to believe.
At 35, Fernandez is the league’s fifth-oldest player, but the number only tells part of the story. He said the chance to come back to the sport he loved so early in life felt “crazy,” adding that he has been working hard for it. For readers who first knew him from Ted Lasso, that is the surprise: the man who played a fictional footballer is trying to be one again, in real life.
Fernandez did not come to this late. He was once a highly rated youth talent in Guadalajara, where football was not just a game but the center of his day. He said his parents used to tell him that it was the only thing he breathed, played, sang, read and watched. He even watched the Premier League, appeared at LAFC games and was spotted taking in the Mexican National Team, the kind of devotion that usually belongs to a player long before it belongs to an actor.
Then injuries changed the path. Serious damage to his meniscus and patella cost him a year of crucial development and slowed his progress during his teenage years. He later played a bit in the Mexican second division, but the momentum never fully returned. After that, he took night classes in journalism, media and visual arts, and was later invited to join his school theater. The shift eventually led to acting, and then to Ted Lasso, where he became widely known for playing Dani Rojas.
That detour did not erase the football. Fernandez said meeting Ronaldinho and Ronaldo Nazario, two of his childhood heroes, helped wake the passion back up inside him. He has said he relates closely to Roy Kent’s story of what comes after football, describing it as an existential crisis he lived through himself. Even after the acting success, the old pull remained.
What makes this return unusual is not only that Fernandez is playing again, but that he is doing it after fame found him elsewhere. He built a new career after soccer stalled, then came back to the sport that first defined him. For now, the unanswered part is how far this second run can go. El Paso Locomotive has him on the roster and on the field; the next test is whether the comeback becomes a chapter or a full second career.
