RYAN REYNOLDS’ WELCOME TO WREXHAM WILL BE ADORABLE BUT ALSO… ANNOYING?
WHAT’S BEHIND A HOLLYWOOD STAR (AND HIS FRIEND’S) DECISION TO BUY A WELSH FOOTBALL TEAM? AND WILL IT MAKE FOR WINNING TV?
Did Ryan Reynolds (and Rob, let me check this online, McElhenney) buy Wrexham AFC solely so they could make a “docuseries” entitled Welcome to Wrexham, about that time when Ryan Reynolds (and Rob, according to IMDb, McElhenney) bought Wrexham AFC?
No disrespect to the residents of Wrexham — they’ve doubtless had a skinful already — but it’s hard to imagine why else Ryan Reynolds (and Rob, Wikipedia confirms, McElhenney) would have decided to purchase a club that plays in the National League — that’s the fifth tier of English football — other than for shits, giggles, goodguy brand-building points and revenue-driving content-creation opportunities. Is there any point in doing anything anymore unless you can document it for your millions of adoring followers? (44.3 million on Instagram in Reynolds’ case; 43.2 million fewer in the other dude’s.) Or, better yet, sell it to a global streaming service for $$$? Doubtless all profits will go back into the club and, next season, Cristiano
Ronaldo will be turning out for The Dragons.
But perhaps that’s too cynical. Maybe Reynolds (yes, and Rob Wotsit) just really wished he could spend less time in his palatial New York home with his beautiful A-list wife and their children, and more time with his good buddy (Rob something?) at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground, in the stinging rain, watching target-man Paul Mullin spurn a glorious 90th-minute chance to go one-up against Solihull Moors, and as a result be roundly castigated by the home fans, in the form of disobliging chants about his supposed sexual peccadilloes, for not having stumped up the €60m cash for Erling Haaland. (Warning you, Ryan, those £2.80 non-specific-meat-product pies look pretty consoling at half time, when it’s scoreless, and your talismanic centre-half’s just been stretchered off, but they don’t do anything for the superhero physique.)
Reynolds, for those lower-division football fans who don’t follow these things, is a handsome and hugely successful 45-year-old
Canadian-American actor, producer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. (For clarity, he’s the Deadpool Ryan, not the Drive Ryan. The Drive Ryan owns Port Vale.*) In addition to Wrexham, Reynolds owns a gin brand, an advertising agency, a telecommunications company and, launching soon, a nonprofit that aims to promote leadership opportunities for people of colour in the creative industries. (Rob McElhenney, for anyone out there, is… no, sorry, you’ll have to Google him. He’s Jonny Wilkes to Reynolds’ Robbie Williams, that’s the best I can do.)
Wrexham, for those comic-book-blockbuster aficionados who don’t follow these things, is a medieval market town in North Wales — population 65,000; smaller than the capacity of Old Trafford — known, if at all, for its handsome church, St Giles’; its splendid stately home, Erddig Hall; and the Xplore! Science discovery centre (Wikipedia again). It is also home to one of the largest industrial estates in Europe, and one can only guess at the rapt excitement with which Blake Lively greeted this information.
What Wrexham’s not known for, by those who know it: glamour; celebrity; unlimited wealth, with former Blue Peter dreamboat Tim Vincent being the exception that proves the rule.
Tim aside, what drew Ryan, born and raised in that hotbed of soccer fandom, Vancouver (and his pal, wherever he’s from), to North Wales, and the National League?
Rich Americans have been buying English football clubs for some time now. (Wrexham is the first Welsh one.) Ethically, it’s perhaps more convenient for your club to sell out to a rapacious US businessman than, as with Manchester City and Newcastle United, to the sovereign wealth funds of despotic Gulf states. And it can yield results on the pitch, too, as Liverpool, owned by Boston’s Fenway Sports Group, can testify. But fans of Manchester United, owned by the cuddly Glazer family of Florida, and Arsenal, owned by Stan Kroenke, based in Colorado, might not agree. Those magnificent clubs, once firmly rooted in their communities, now seem lost, free-floating consumer brands unmoored from their localities, stripped of their purpose except as debt dumps for overseas investors. All that guff about football stadia as secular cathedrals, and clubs as unifying expressions of local pride and passion, is pretty hard to swallow when your stadium is named after a Middle Eastern airline, your owner lives in
Palm Beach, and your best player, on £350,000 a week, is eyeing a transfer to Barcelona. It’s said that football fans wear their hearts on their sleeves. Those Arsenal fans wearing replica shirts have the legend “Visit Rwanda” printed on their biceps. (Perhaps Priti Patel is on the board?) The most prominent logo on the Wrexham AFC shirt — how good is this? — is that of TikTok.
The most remarkable acquisition of an English club, perhaps ever, was the recent governmentforced sale of Chelsea FC, by the effervescent Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, to a consortium headed by the American businessman Todd Boehly, part owner of the LA Dodgers and the LA Lakers. It went for £4.25bn. Truly heartwarming stuff, and not in any way indicative of the moral black hole at the centre of the world’s favourite spectator sport.
Reynolds (and bestie) bought Wrexham in 2020 for rather less than Boehly paid for his latest sporting bauble: £2m, which wouldn’t get you a two-bed flat in SW3. (Rob, mate, you’re on the airbed.) At that time, Wrexham were bottom of the National League. Last season, they finished second — the Deadpool effect? — but lost in the play-off semi-final to Grimsby Town, 5-4 AET. They also reached the FA Trophy final, losing 1-0 to Bromley.
Sorry, is this stuff cute and funny? Will it make for a heart-warming docuseries, filled with laughter, tears, life-lessons and hilarious separatedby-a-common-language misunderstandings? Previews of Welcome to Wrexham were unavailable as Esquire went to press. One hopes that the wealthy, sophisticated North Americans don’t try to pass themselves off as unpolished, simpleminded rubes, wide-eyed in the Old World, rather than the steely, driven, profit-motivated Ur-capitalists they really are. Likewise, one fears the flinty folk of North Wales being presented as starstruck naïfs, bowled over by the attentions of their celebrity saviours. But we shall see. It may be that the Ted-Lasso-IRL premise will give way to something more complex and rewarding: a rich stew, rather than one of those radioactive half-time pies.
Anyway, no doubt, as I write this, Jason Statham (and his mate Phil) is readying a Netflixfunded bid for minor-league sensations the Rocket City Trash Pandas, of Madison, Alabama, and I’ll have to eat my baseball hat and admit cultural imperialism really has no borders anymore, and we Brits are just as guilty as they are.
Until then, over to you, Ryan. (And you, erm, Rob?) alex bilmes
‘Welcome to Wrexham’ is out 25 August on Disney+