Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds buy a football club in Welcome To Wrexham
Hollywood descends upon a working-class Welsh town in this FX docuseries
TV Reviews Rob McElhenney
In November 2020, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia creator and star Rob McElhenney formed a company with Ryan Reynolds and bought a small professional football club in the U.K. (We’ll give those of you who hadn’t heard about it time to Google it and confirm this is a real thing. And yes, also, we’ll be calling it football for the duration of this review.)
Despite obvious (and dull) comparisons to Ted Lasso from many corners, once the docuseries Welcome To Wrexham wraps its second episode, it’s clear this isn’t the real-life equivalent of the hyper-optimistic Apple TV+ hit. Not because it’s dour, but because, from top to bottom, there’s a sense of competency and jeopardy amongst the people behind this lovably wacky narrative.
And it is wacky. Welcome To Wrexham addresses the elephant in the room early on: Why these two guys? Why this club? Why … any of this? A single, concrete answer remains elusive, but the pair are clearly having a good time. There are reports McElhenney got the seed of the idea after watching the modest Netflix success Sunderland ’Til I Die. “I wanted to do this but I needed more than just TV money to do it” McElhenney says in an early talking-head segment about why he approached Reynolds. “I needed someone with movie money. Superhero movie money. Gin baron money … How many more companies does this bitch have?” The how and why of the two settling on Wrexham is vague, but it makes sense: While Wrexham is nowhere near the lofty heights of the Premier League and regularly televised matches, it’s a proud club and mainstay in U.K. football. In fact, it’s the third-oldest professional football team in the world.
McElhenney and Reynolds are obviously the stars of the show, and their patter is fun, but a core strength of the series is how it highlights the club, its supporters, and the town around them. On the day the supporters’ trust (Wrexham’s previous ownership, made up of more than a thousand working-class fans) convenes to discuss the proposed takeover, families around Wrexham gather around their laptops like they’re watching the moon landing for the opportunity to grill Deadpool about why they should entrust him with one of the most important parts of their daily lives. Wrexham is a long way from Hollywood, where Rob and Ryan sit in a marble-adorned kitchen agonizing over the expense of installing a new playing field, then paying for another when the first proves flawed after Wrexham’s opening match. One location in regular rotation is the pub outside the stadium; another is a shop advertising “DVDs, Blu-ray, and VHS.”
And there’s one more main character who emerges: Humphrey Ker, a brilliant British comedian who guest starred on Sunny and writes for McElhenney’s Mythic Quest. It seems Ker is the go-to source of football knowledge, advising McElhenney and Reynolds on everything from the realities of supporting a club (it’s mostly painful) to whether or not they should splash out to lure a successful striker from the league above to drop down a peg and join the project. Ker, eventually, is installed as the Executive Director at Wrexham (while retaining his TV career in the U.S.), and the awkward speech he gives to the players and coaching staff on his first visit to the club will resonate with anyone who’s ever felt a little out of their depth at work.
Welcome To Wrexham may, under cynical scrutiny, be viewed as a savvy PR move to lessen the risks McElhenney and Reynolds, who are credited as executive producers on this doc, have taken: If it all fails and we’ve got a bunch of footage of them caring, working, and furrowing their brows, then blowback is bound to be less intense if they cut their losses and pulled out. They’re aware of this, and both seem genuinely concerned with being perceived as dilettantes or, as they frequently put it, “assholes.” “We can’t just disappear if this fails,” Reynolds thinks out loud at one point in a Zoom call with his partner. “People … well, they know how to find us.”
There is plenty of opportunity for failure, and the docuseries definitely doesn’t shy away from some of the harsh realities of football ownership: Older or underperforming players have to be released; coaches have to be sacked; and in courting professionals to run and manage their club, McElhenney and Reynolds constantly have to prove that they’re for real. The overall vibe, though, is fun, with the show doing an excellent job explaining the frustratingly complex English league system with zippy diagrams and pithy U.S.-to-U.K.-to-Welsh translations here and there. And when the turnstiles open for Wrexham’s first official match under the new ownership, the atmosphere in the 10,000 capacity stadium is powerful and raw (and a far cry from Ted Lasso’s painfully unconvincing CGI crowds and depiction of The Beautiful Game). To love football, one must enter an agreement to take the agony with the ecstasy, and Wrexham’s had enough agony. It’s time for a bit of fun.
95 Comments
Nothing says completely misunderstanding working-class people (and the Welsh for that matter) or football clubs like installing a posh boy English Etonian with no relevant experience as Executive Director who’s only doing it as a side-job to their work in the US.However giving said posh boy English Etonian with no relevant experience a high-ranking job simply because he’s your mate is very on-brand for how they expect to walk through life.
installing a posh boy English Etonian with no relevant experience as
Executive Director who’s only doing it as a side-job to their work in
the US
This actually sounds like the most British part of the whole show
Have they accidentally made an Armando Ianucci show?
They appointed the daughter of the Chairman of Burton Albion(for 45 years) as the CEO (Burton took exactly the same route out of the National Lg ) in March of 2021 and they had the guy from the Football Lg advising them up until she took over
She will turn up at some point in the season
This one is on my list to watch, though I have fears that this is going to amount to a well-intentioned PR stunt. It is my understanding that English football is different – it is done as a semi-public good and way for owners to measure dicks, rather than the US mindset which is “monetize everything, get paid, lower costs, and fuck anything that goes against that ethos”. It seems more like a labor of love with high highs and low lows. US sports are more investments where the owner can take a back seat 99% of the time and nothing changes and no one cares. I hope I am wrong, but I get the sense that this is going to be a fun, amusing thing to do for a few years and then when the work sets in and it comes Hollywood or Wrexham, the principals are going to bow out gracefully, “do the right thing” and sell. Which is all fine and I hope they bring nothing but joy to the people of (and supporters of) Wrexham.
The big difference here is that clubs are rooted in the communities where they’re based. Owners come and go, some good, some bad, but the club and its supporters remain. The idea that a team can up sticks and move 500 miles away is treated with horror.
It’s only ever really happened once when Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes (less than 70 miles as the crow flies). Wimbledon fans stayed put and started a new club whilst the MK team are pariahs.
There are owners who basically try to run clubs as they would in the US (sadly mostly US based owners like the Glazers and Stan Kroenke) but none of them would dare try to cross that line.
500 miles? Friend, have I got news for you about the borders of the United Kingdom
That’s what makes it so horrifying. Imagine how much worse Liverpool will play if they have to play in the middle of the Atlantic!
Or even more horrifying, France.
That’s just an afternoon stroll in Scotland
I know. I picked the biggest distance that seemed vaguely possible. Land’s End to Berwick is 550 miles, so if their local teams ever make it big…
“There are owners who basically try to run clubs as they would in the US (sadly mostly US based owners like the Glazers and Stan Kroenke) but none of them would dare try to cross that line.”
They’ve already tried (and will no doubt try again) with the proposed breakaway European Super League* Thankfully the backlash from fans and FIFA/UEFA using their iron-fisted dominance for good (for once) by threatening expulsion from international competition for any players who joined the league, meant that it was quickly scrapped but it was pretty obvious that the nature of the US style closed-league and potential markets would have meant that within a couple of years clubs would not only be moving to different cities, they’d be switching countries!*I originally posted a wiki link but as we all know Kinja is useless.
I don’t doubt they’d have cheerfully gone along with the closed league, but moving cities? Not a chance. Never on the cards, never could have been.
Out of the 12 teams proposing the breakaway 6 were based in the UK and even those 6 were split between just two metropolitan areas – London and Liverpool/Manchester (They’re only 35 miles apart with loads of small towns in between). For a league that’s supposed to be representing an entire continent of 44 countries and marketed globally, that leaves a lot of massive potential markets missing out – even if they went to 20 teams as was their intention, there still wouldn’t be enough to go around and pretty soon other major cities would start bidding for franchises and the owners would be courting them because – as was their stated intention at the very outset – they wanted to model it on closed US leagues like the NBA and the NFL. Had it gone ahead (and Russia not invaded Ukraine) I could easily see Roman Abramovich moving Chelsea to Moscow – possibly at the behest of Putin for ego reasons. The Glazers -being American where this shit is second-nature – wouldn’t hesitate in moving United to a more lucrative market. They don’t give a shit about the local fans – it’s a global enterprise and they’ll still sell as many kits in Asia as before. I can’t see City’s Arab owners being that enamoured with Manchester either so they’d probably be looking to move the whole team to Abu Dhabi because why stop at ‘Europe’ Going global isn’t far-fetched either. Distance isn’t much of an issue when you can rigidly control your fixtures – Rugby Union’s Super Rugby competition had teams from Asia, Africa, Oceania and South America all competing when it was at it’s peak and tellingly they got all their teams to quietly drop their home cities from the team names to make them more appealing to international fans.
Setting up a closed breakaway Super League then concentrating all the competing teams in a handful of localised areas is ludicrous when your intention is to generate as much profit as possible. Team movements would have been almost guaranteed had they been able to get away with it.
Still no. Would never happen.
This isn’t the Rams moving from St Louis to LA. This is Manchester United. Without the Manchester they’re just United.
If they wanted a Russian side, or any other country involved it would be a lot cheaper and easier to just start a new Moscow based team (Franchise if you wish) and let them join. Or pick one of the existing ones.
So it’s more akin to the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to LA then.The whole point in having a 20 team closed league is exclusivity. It was to be billed as the ‘20 biggest clubs in the world’ with the unique selling point of having ‘The World’s Best Players’ and it was also specifically setup to maximise profits for team owners. You can’t just ‘start up a new team’ as there’s limited space and more teams mean less of a share of the pie for the existing teams. In a global market, the location of the home stadium is not a concern. The millions of kit-buying, channel-subscribing fans across Asia, Africa and the rest of the globe wouldn’t give a shit if Man U were all of a sudden playing out of Miami. As long as the team colours stay the same and they’re fielding the best players in the world then the vast majority of fans worldwide are happy. Don’t just take my word for it though- it’s happened repeatedly in every closed league I can think of – NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and it’s not just a US thing. Australia’s AFL (Aussie Rules) and NRL (Rugby) and cricket’s multi-billion dollar Indian Premier League have all had teams change names, home cities etc. and in the AFL’s case, there’s a far greater emphasis on team heritage and tradition than even in football.
To think that the billionaire owners of the 12 breakaway ESL clubs wouldn’t do the same must require almost ‘religious fundamentalist’ levels of denial.
US sports are more investments where the owner can take a back seat 99% of the time and nothing changes and no one cares.It’s been becoming that way in English and European football in the last thirty years. And since there’s no salary caps in England/Europe, the teams with the rich foreign owners now have payrolls and budgets going into the tens of billions of dollars as they’re spending tens of millions on a single player, creating a massive imbalance of the teams with this kind of setup vs the teams that don’t. That’s why the people of Wrexham were probably happy at the sight of this. They think Reynolds is going to be one of these big money spenders that’ll help make their team win trophies. They’re going to be in for a sad surprise when they realize he’s not one of those kinds of people
Financial Fair Play actually prevents wealthy owners from coming in and just spending for a top-tier team at a loss, and the Football League in particular harshly punishes violations, oftentimes with points deductions that can result in multiple relegations. Teams have to fund their player salaries and transfer budgets with money earned from actual football revenue (i.e., matchday ticket sales, endorsement deals, matchday concession sales, TV deal money, etc.). The only things the owners can use their own money for are training grounds, stadium building/improvements, front office staff, academy staff, and general coaching staff. Reynolds and McElhanny have fairly substantial reserves that they can spend on that sort of thing which will be a long-term fungible gain for the club and the surrounding community, but if they want to spend big on players, it’s a pretty big gamble for both themselves, and the club itself.
LOL thinking FPP is actually being followed and enforced. Because it hasn’t been.
LMAO thinking that Reynolds and McElhanny is going to spend millions of their own money that he doesn’t really have on this. He’s most likely going to sell once the publicity goes away and owning and running an European football club is a lot harder and expensive that realized.
“Financial Fair Play actually prevents wealthy owners from coming in and just spending for a top-tier team at a loss.”Fact check: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sup, I just bought a football team, and I’m a billionaire 40 times over. And I don’t have to worry about Financial Fair play because our biglargehuge club just inked at 3B dollar shirt/stadium sponsor deal w/ the company I own and no it doesn’t matter that this company who is sponsoring my shirt isn’t even worth 3 billion.
Yeah on the one hand, and this is in the top tier, you have City, who’s lineup is basically a cheat code, owned by Arab billionaires. In mid to lower table you have teams like West Ham, whose owners made their money with a chain of sex shops, and then you have teams at the bottom who are up and down a lot, your Fulhams, Watford and so on whose ownership tends to change hands more often, although even at the Championship level now, the money required to run a successful club is quite expensive.
Yeah people in the UK (and honestly many places that aren’t the US) feel very protective of their local football club, and it can be a precarious existence- quite a few teams don’t exist anymore, even ones that did very well in their prime. (And in the UK this is also tied into regional problems, Wales and North England both being hit hard by the decline of British industry which translated into their teams having less money, etc.)
I prefer my ham not to be wrecked
Sorry, Steamedham wasn’t going to sell it’s team to these nutters.
The Rumham FC wasn’t for sale either, so this was their next best option.
Pressedham was probably available, though.
I wreck my own ham.My table manners have been described as feeding time at the zoo.
Rich people do thing. Gosh, compelling. Can’t wait to watch rich people do something. Love rich people. Love rich. Rich! So rich.
Rich people do thing.Seems like an odd thing to complain about considering how many TV shows and movies would fit that description.
It’s not an odd complaint – I just hate it. I hate all those shows about rich people. Scripted or “unscripted.”
I think the without-a-net element of this is what’s interesting. It’s a couple of well-liked and yes, wealthy (well Reynolds anyway) guys who are by their own admissions in over their heads. It’s not a Kardashians-style adventure that after this week you’ll never hear about again; there are real consequences of failure here. If they fuck up the team and then blow town they’ll take shit for it for a long time.
Well, then don’t watch them. I do this with reality TV all the time. It’s very easy.
Why shouldn’t they complain; now you’re attacking them for complaining. Jeezus, get your mind right.
you’re attacking them for complainingCommenting on a criticism now constitutes “attacking” someone?
Well, the slight difference and Reynolds and Mac are significantly less rich than your average sports team owners?
Don’t care.
“Don’t care.”
Yet here you are, reading and commenting on an article about a phenomenon that is never going away.
Ryan Reynolds’s dad was a cop. Rob McElhenney waited tables in LA while he was trying to get a gig. Maybe both of them are now really successful – and, yes, rich – because they’re smart and work really hard and are good at what they do? Just a thought.
Also, every interview of McElhenney’s I’ve listened to, he comes across as a kid from Philly who knows exactly how lucky in life he’s gotten.
Hang in there, Bitter Broke Guy.
What makes you think he’s broke?
I mean, I’m not broke. I just find it hard to really care about any of this, in the face of, you know…the world. But if you like Real Housewives stuff, go for it.
People are meant to watch because they’re celebs/actors they like, rather than just rich guys. Likeability and charisma is the draw, not wealth. A similar show about boring hedge fund managers of similar wealth would have less appeal.
I’m on your team. PR for the rich can kick rocks. PR for the rich tricks ppl into ignoring the corrosive, psychopathic world-ending effect they have. To say nothing of how they rob almost everyone of their labor’s true value, hoard more money than they can physically spend, and weaponize poverty and homelessness to coerce us into working more than anyone needs to.
I don’t like hate either of those dudes, but objectively, Reynolds is now capital R rich from the gin and Mint Mobile. But if this were some cynical effort to win ppl over to the rich’s side, Reynolds is charming enough to work for most ppl. It’s not necessary; there are plenty of bootlicks, class traitors, and simps who gleefully kiss the rich’s ass and call us jealous and broke lol.
Maybe this website isn’t for you??
Peacocking AV Club commentator (who certainly jacked off about his comment afterwards): “Don’t care”Replies:
I jacked off beforehand, actually. I only engage in the comments-section in a post-orgasm glow.
You sound poor.
It seems weird to preview the entire series minus the last episode for review. It seems like you could watch two episodes and get the gist of the series, or the whole series and completely digest it. Withholding the last episode makes it seem like there’s some major spoiler that they don’t want to leak.
The least believable thing in Dark Knight Rises was old-ass Hines Ward having any kind of juice left in his legs. Dude couldnt shed guys one on one anymore, let alone outrun an explosion!
Oh hello again article that was pulled yet wasn’t removed from social media so it just linked to nothing…
Christ, now we need to be members of this shitty blog to make dumb comments on poorly written articles?Well, go on then, sign me up.
Wrexham? Damn near killed’em!
I’m not saying that Wreckx-n-Effect should score the entirety of the series…but if they go a full season without the saxophone intro to “Rump Shaker” ever showing up, then production has let us all down.
Also, it’s pronounced ‘Wrecks-mmm’ (Like ‘Wrecks-em’ but you almost completely elide the ‘e’ sound). I’m back in Canada now, but when I lived in the UK for five years in the 1990s I was in a little town in North Wales equidistant to both Wrexham and Chester; I did most of my shopping in the latter, but there was a good Sainsbury’s in Wrexham that I’d often shop at for groceries if that was all I needed. It’s not from from the Wrexham FC grounds; never took in a match, sadly.
“but you almost completely elide the ‘e’ sound”Americans! Canadians! Heed Nebuly’s wisdom. It applies to pretty much every *ham placename in Britain. Also, be careful of *cester; no matter what pronunciation you choose, it /will/ be the wrong one for the town you’re in.
Shoot, ditto for New England as well. I’m re-watching 30 Rock currently and hearing Julianne Moore say “Waltham” is…trying.
Try bouncing from Mass to NC and trying to remember which pronunciation of Concord to use without facing the wrath of your local Masshole/red neck.
“Woburn” is another one that always messes with people who aren’t familiar with the area.
Pretty much every one, but not every single one, right?
My wildcard search string is case-sensitive, so it will pick up Birmingham or Eltham, but not “West Ham”….Hole successfully undug.
While we’re at it, why is it Reynolds Renolds?Why would anybody put a “Y” there?
I see you’ve steered clear of the whole question of why a Welsh football club would be a “mainstay in English football”. Very wise.
Reminds me of the typically surly Scot Andy Murray winning Olympic gold and being asked by your typical vapid U.S. interviewer how it felt to win a gold for England. His response: “Britain.” While grinding his teeth.
As any English person knows, he’s only Scottish when he loses. When he wins, he’s British.
It’s shite being Scottish! He’s the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization!
One of my favorite things about America is how steadfastly we’ve worked for centuries to ignore any and all legal boundaries (including certain politically fraught ones) when referring to anything at all about the British Isles.“Dublin, huh? Ya’ll got one of them Downton Abbeys there?”
It’s worked so far.They came within a hair of getting promoted this year.They’ve done a solid job.
these two remind me of a couple of popular seniors in high school: charming, on student council, throw parties at their parents’ big houses every month, could join the drama society but would rather throw said parties. i’d be okay with it, but it bothers me now that some projects come with the marketing of “from the twisted mind of ryan reynolds.” you nerds, the president of the student council can never have a twisted mind.
Counterpoint:
The Voices was pretty twisted.Not sure it came from Ryan Reynolds mind though.
I think the biggest problem I have with this show is that soccer is boring and dumb.
Got any “yo momma” or “that’s what she said” jokes you want to get off your chest, too? I mean, if we’re doing tired hacky jokes…
I like your username.
Aren’tyou overdue on pulling the slab off bologna out from under your moob?
Oh of course! You guys have that funny little regional game with all the commercials don’t you!
I know, right! I much prefer watching our American sports where half of the time is spent for commercial breaks and games like baseball can last for 4 hours or more.
No one should make money off of sports. No one. Not owners, not athletes, no one. Make all able bodied athletes work in construction. At least they are doing something useful. As opposed to running around kicking a ball and fomenting useless division amongst an already divided world.
“Make strong, athletic men perform manual labor of my choosing.”That’s slavery, bro.
Are you of the opinion that entertainment has no value to society, and if so, why are you on a pop culture site?
“The entertainment I like is good and valuable. Other kinds are a drain on society.”
I think they’re joking.
Only entertainment that does not elevate one’s mind. Sports, reality television, competitive video games, etc.
Okay this is either a bit or you are like 15 years old. Games and competition are like a fundamental thing in human activity, we literally cannot pinpoint an origin for “the first sporting event” because it was probably sometime during the Stone Age. Not only is there the vicarious thrill- arguably a kind of ritualized combat and sublimation of hunting instincts that no longer get put to use by most people- but there’s all sorts of intellectual analysis, number crunching, downright poetic sports writing, etc. Go to a baseball game and you’ll see people with programs where they mark up every hit, strike, out, etc. for stats purposes. And even if you just watch to see the people run fast, I mean, why not?Soccer/footy for example is a very interesting game on a psychological level. Play is mostly continuous over a fairly large space, so a lot of the challenge is for a team to be able to keep in communication and stay cohesive over 90 minutes. Basketball’s kinda like that too but the arena’s smaller and people are more hunched up, in soccer it has got to be easy to lose track of where your teammates are. And this is to say NOTHING of the all important psychological questions, when to take a dive and how to make it look totally legitimate. Stuff like this is an emergent property of being alive. We seek rest and recreation. It’s like I said elsewhere, there are towns in Britain where the factories are shut and half the storefronts are empty, but they live for the matches.
Yeah! Meanwhile artists should be painting my living room or patching the brick outside. Useless, shifty sons of bitches.
Wow. Purple icons are really vying for top bitter d-bags of the day. Sorry to be among your ranks.
Interesting that they REALLY bought the FC, I had seen the commercial for this and wasn’t really sure that they really did buy it.
What probably won’t be mentioned by the show is that whenever there’s a team with a sugar daddy that financially dopes them, the rest of the division and all the fans associated with those clubs fucking HATE them, and want to destroy them in every match.Look up Salford for instance.
This is why I kinda want Wrexham to stay in the Nationwide Conference for the next few seasons. Have them fight for the right to get promoted. I don’t want another Salford City.
Love McElhenney. Love Reynolds. Love lower league football.When you open the book of “How to Ruin Your Football Club,” hiring your buddy who knows a lot about the sport is the first entry in the “Massive Errors” chapter.
They did not do that though .
They had a guy from to Football League who was advising them and by March that year they had appointed the daughter (who worked with her dad on staff at another club ) of the Chairman of Burton Albion – been owner for 25 years and took them up the leagues and is mixed race
“Despite obvious (and dull) comparisons to Ted Lasso from many corners”Sorry but not sorry. This is such an obvious comparison it’s never going to go away.