‘Ted Lasso’s’ Zava Character Draws From Real Soccer Icons, Actor Reveals

‘Ted Lasso’ fans spent much of season three fixated on one question after AFC Richmond landed the game’s most talked about new signing. Zava, the mononymous forward played by Maximilian Osinski, arrived with a mystique that made even hardened footballers in the locker room go starstruck.

The character’s larger than life presence was no accident, and the actor behind him has been candid about exactly which real athletes shaped the role.

Zava’s Real-Life Inspiration In Ted Lasso

Osinski told USA Today that Zava was based on Eric Cantona of France, Polish striker Robert Lewandowski, and primarily Zlatan Ibrahimović of Sweden, also a striker. The resemblance goes beyond personality, since Zava’s lean build and man bun closely mirror Ibrahimović’s physical appearance as well.

The parallels extend into the character’s backstory too. Zava is mentioned as having just left Juventus, a club based in Italy that Ibrahimović played for between 2004 and 2006, and the fictional player’s career arc of switching teams frequently echoes Ibrahimović’s own path across nine professional clubs. Even the name choice has drawn attention from viewers, with the similarity between Zava and Zlatan already apparent just from the two names side by side.

Maximilian Osinski’s Approach To Playing Zava

Osinski has spoken about how he built the character from a blend of sources rather than a single individual. He told TheWrap that the goal was not to play the literal real life version of anyone Zava was based on, but rather an amalgamation of those players, since figures like that exist and genuinely influence the world of football, not just in England, and they do change the room.

His research process reportedly went deep. In an interview with GQ, Osinski explained that when he received the breakdown for the role, the character was described as a mix between Zlatan Ibrahimović and Eric Cantona, framed as an agitator rather than a straightforward villain, which pushed him to study interviews and read Ibrahimović’s book while also drawing from Robert Lewandowski.

That same conversation revealed a distinction Osinski found essential to the performance. He noted that how these players present themselves to the press is not who they are in the locker room with their teammates or in their personal lives, a gap he tried to capture in Zava’s public swagger versus his more calculated private moments.

Osinski returned to that idea in a separate conversation with Vulture, explaining that researching athletes like Zlatan and Cantona revealed multiple versions of who they are, from the public figure they present to the press to who they become in the locker room and with family. He added that he committed fully to each version without judging it, which shaped how unpredictable Zava could feel from scene to scene.

Zava’s Impact On AFC Richmond And Jamie Tartt

Zava’s arrival did more than boost AFC Richmond’s scoring record. His swagger and arrogance filled the space that had slowly been vacated by Jamie Tartt over the course of the show, and even other players, most notably Dani Rojas, were left starstruck by his presence.

The dynamic between Zava and Jamie became one of the season’s more pointed character studies. Phil Dunster, who plays Jamie, explained that his character had been trying his best to be one out of eleven rather than one in a million, and seemed to be in a much better place with that mindset right up until Zava arrived. Dunster added that Zava challenges Jamie’s growth by insisting the team should not play to any one person in particular, which puts that development to a real test.

Kola Bokinni, who plays team captain Isaac McAdoo, offered a similarly grounded read on the shift. He described Zava’s addition as bringing too many cooks into a kitchen, framing Jamie as the head chef before someone came along who was, in his words, a bigger cheese. The comment captured how the show used Zava to quietly reset the pecking order at AFC Richmond without undoing Jamie’s earlier arc.

Getting Zava to Richmond in the first place required some maneuvering from the club’s leadership. Rupert initially appealed to the player to join West Ham United, but Rebecca understood that adding Zava would make her ex-husband’s team unstoppable, so she stepped in and convinced him to take a chance on the lower ranked Greyhounds instead.

Why Zava’s Ted Lasso Run Was Short-Lived

For all the buildup, Zava’s tenure on the show did not last long. Osinski’s character had a notable four episode arc in season three before largely vanishing from the storyline, and reactions among AFC Richmond insiders in the story were mixed even as most fans seemed simply disappointed to see him go.

Osinski has since weighed in on why the character’s exit made sense from a storytelling standpoint, tying it back to the same real world research that shaped his performance from the start. The layered inspiration behind Zava, from Ibrahimović’s blend of genius and eccentricity to Cantona’s own reputation as an agitator, gave the character enough texture to leave an impression even in a limited run.

Given how much of Zava’s swagger, backstory, and eventual exit trace back to real footballers Osinski studied for the role, it is worth asking which real-life player’s influence stood out most to you while watching his run on ‘Ted Lasso.’