Nineteenth placed in the English fifth division in the 2019-20 season, in just six years Wrexham became a contender for a place in the billion-dollar Premier League. Cynics might retort that this fairy tale would be impossible without the millions from the two Hollywood actors who bought the modest club in Wales. But the authentic euphoria of the local fans has been moving fans all over the world, with the help of social networks and streaming platforms.
“There were people who joined football clubs, spent a lot of money and didn’t have the success that Wrexham had”, comments reporter Will Unwin, from the London newspaper “The Guardian”, who has followed Wrexham’s rise over the years.
Wrexham is a city of 45,000 inhabitants in North Wales, home to a professional club considered the third oldest in the world: it was founded in 1864, just one year after the creation of association football. They are one of five Welsh teams that opt for the English leagues rather than the Cymru Premier (“Cymru” is the name for Wales in the Welsh language).
Wrexham never got beyond the English second division, from which they fell in 1982, beginning an inexorable decline. Everything changed in 2020, when American actor Rob McElhenney (from the FX series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) watched the documentary “Sunderland Until I Die”, on Netflix, about the relegated English club’s struggle to return to the Premier League.
Fascinated, McElhenney decided to look for a team to produce a similar phenomenon. He teamed up with fellow Canadian Ryan Reynolds (“Deadpool”) and bought Wrexham at the end of 2020, for a mere 2 million pounds (around R$18 million adjusted for inflation).
The investment paid off, both on screen and on the field. The series “Welcome to Wrexham”, launched by FX in 2022, won numerous awards, while the team moved up three years in a row between 2023 and 2025.
With ten rounds to go before the end of this year’s Championship (the second division), Wrexham occupies sixth place. Third, fourth, fifth and sixth placed compete in a knockout stage for a place in the Premier League.
At the helm of Wrexham, McElhenney and Reynolds have behaved, at least for now, differently than other millionaire football club owners. They attend many games, sometimes taking celebrities with them. They hired executives who understand the subject, but kept old employees at the club. “There’s still a lot of the roots. They only modernized where it was necessary to modernize”, analyzes Will Unwin.
The club’s sustainability is still doubtful, but the two actors have sought to invest with restraint. “It’s a good squad, but not a Premier League one,” explains Unwin. The specialized website Transfermarkt estimates the current squad at R$400 million. It will be necessary to spend more: today the bottom of the Premier League, Wolverhampton, is worth four times as much.
Wrexham has become the pride of north Wales – but only in the north, says Unwin: there is a strong rivalry with southern teams Swansea, also in the English second division, and Cardiff City, currently in the third. Before the success, in Wrexham people mostly supported teams from neighboring Liverpool and Manchester.
Last week, Wrexham made headlines around the world when they faced Chelsea, winners of the FIFA Club World Cup last year, in the round of 16 of the FA Cup, the FA Cup. Playing in their modest stadium (10,000 seats), the Racecourse Ground, the Welsh team was only eliminated in extra time, 4-2.
On the day of the game, in an interview with ESPN, Ryan Reynolds denied a rumor that his next project was to buy Santa Cruz, from Recife. “I’d rather do one thing well than 50 things poorly”, he explained.
Even if it doesn’t go up this year, Wrexham will continue its project. In July, he will go on a tour of the USA, which includes a friendly in New York against an English football giant, Liverpool, something unthinkable just seven years ago.
