How Wrexham surged from obscurity to within sight of the Premier League
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A dream of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney as they finalized their out-of-the-blue takeover of Wrexham AFC in 2021 was to lead the long-suffering club to the Premier League.
It seemed pie-in-the-sky thinking, but they are almost there.
Make that three straight promotions for the Welsh team with a cult following after a 3-0 win over Charlton on Saturday secured a place in the second-tier Championship.
Here’s a look at the rise of Wrexham, once a down-on-its-luck, financially ravaged, fan-owned club that has been thrust into the limelight in remarkable fashion:
The takeover
It seemed like a joke. Did two Hollywood celebrities really want to buy a soccer club from a long-overlooked Welsh city of 45,000 people that was languishing in the fifth tier of the English game?
Well, Reynolds — the star of the “Deadpool” movies — and McElhenney — an American actor, director and creator of TV show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” — were deadly serious.
After convincing supporters of their motives on a Zoom call by outlining their vision to make the team a “global force,” they went and bought Wrexham for $2.5 million.
A remarkable journey began.
Getting out of the nonleague system
The first task for Wrexham was getting out of the National League — the level below England’s four professional divisions and where the club had been residing since 2008.
It didn’t come easily.
For the first full season under the celebrity owners, Wrexham hired a new manager — Phil Parkinson, who had good experience in the lower leagues — and was soon spending much more than its rivals, on players such as prolific striker Paul Mullin. Wrexham finished in second place in the National League, missing out on the one automatic promotion spot, and lost in the playoff semifinals to Grimsby.
That wasn’t the end of the late-season heartache. Wrexham also lost in the final of the FA Trophy — a competition for nonleague teams — at Wembley Stadium, in front of Reynolds and McElhenney.
However, the following season and after a to-and-fro battle with Notts County, Wrexham got the job done and was promoted as fifth-tier champion with a record points total. The path to promotion was cleared by a 3-2 win over Notts County featuring a last-minute penalty save by Ben Foster, a former Manchester United goalkeeper who came out of retirement at age 40 on a short-term basis.
“I will never be the same again,” a breathless Reynolds said.
“Welcome to Wrexham” — the Emmy award-winning TV series created to chronicle the A-list owners’ first foray into soccer ownership — was up to Season 2 and would get the Hollywood ending the first season failed to deliver.
Vegas trip, big sponsors, another promotion
How would Wrexham cope, then, back in the English Football League after a 15-year absence?
Pretty well, it turned out.
After a postseason trip to Las Vegas, the squad was enhanced by former Premier League players like Steven Fletcher, the attendance at the rocking Racecourse Ground was boosted to more than 12,000 — with the promise of a higher capacity before too long — and more sponsors were brought in. Big ones too, like United Airlines, Betty Buzz and Aviation American Gin.
Parkinson delivered again as Wrexham took League Two by storm, achieving promotion at the first attempt. A 6-0 win over Forest Green ensured Wrexham was going up — and another pitch invasion by jubilant fans — as the team finished the season in second place behind Stockport County.
For the first time in its 159-year history, Wrexham earned promotion in two consecutive seasons.
Tourist boom and conquering League One
Optimism and aspiration was suddenly rife, on and off the field, in a much-changed city that quickly became something of a tourist destination.
The team earned record turnover and was valued at 9 million pounds ($11.8 million) by a board member ahead of the start of a first season in the third-tier League One in nearly two decades. It’ll be much more than that now.
Wrexham didn’t even need Mullin, its top scorer for the previous three seasons, to launch an unlikely promotion challenge that never really wavered and captured growing attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
Boosted by the midseason signings of some strikers, including Sam Smith, Wrexham held off Wycombe to secure a second-place finish behind Birmingham and a return to the second tier for the first time since 1982.
Reynolds was there for the clinching victory over Charlton on Saturday, pulling pints ahead of the game in The Turf pub that’s connected to the ground and then celebrating wildly after the final whistle.
So, what’s next?
Maybe the Premier League.
First of all, however, comes the not-so-easy task of overcoming a bunch of big-name clubs in the Championship, many of whom recently have been in the top flight — like Ipswich, Southampton, Leicester, West Bromwich Albion and Norwich. There’s also Birmingham, which counts NFL great Tom Brady as a minority owner.
Wrexham executive Humphrey Ker already acknowledged the club might have to quadruple its payroll — a reported 11 million pounds ($14.65 million) — to survive a grueling league. Ker seems sure Reynolds and McElhenney will dig into their pockets once again, no doubt fueled by the ongoing success of “Welcome to Wrexham.”
The renovation of Wrexham’s once-imposing Kop stand also should be finished by the end of next season, in time for the Racecourse to potentially host qualifying matches for international tournaments for Wales’ men’s national team.
Expect the caliber of players turning out at the stadium to improve too.
Jamie Vardy, anyone?
