It's an unlikely story to say the least, one made in Hollywood with Hollywood stars, to be sure.
A couple of American guys with no real connections to futbol (soccer), Great Britain, or the English Premier League, and all its subsidiaries, decide to buy a soccer team and end up reviving an historic town and franchise at the same time. It's kind of silly, and an even more idealistic narrative than the brilliant and heartwarming story of Ted Lasso that saved the feel good sports story a few years back. This is, of course, the story of "Ryan Reynold, Rob Mac, and Wrexham Football Five Years Later."
“I didn’t know Rob, [Reynolds explains]. But I noticed we followed each other on Instagram. I sent him a little note. I think I even told him not to respond. I just wanted to say I’d enjoyed something he did.”From such inauspicious beginnings came one of the more remarkable sports partnerships. The two actors have spent the past five years transforming the fortunes of not only a football club but an entire town (now city) by restoring a sense of civic pride many locals in Wrexham feared had gone for good.
The Athletic is speaking exclusively to Reynolds and Mac to mark their anniversary today. We are five years on from the February 9, 2021 takeover that has effectively rewritten the book on how to successfully run a football club. And this despite the fact, as Mac quips in our interview, “We still don’t 100 per cent understand the sport!”
To recap, the pair paid a token £1 to buy an ailing team who were then playing down in the fifth tier of the English football pyramid, alongside a promise to invest a further £2million. Five years — and three successive promotions — later, that same club are one promotion from the Premier League and were recently valued at £350million ($475m).
It’s a remarkable rags-to-riches story that has been captured in the Welcome To Wrexham documentary series, whose own successes include 10 Emmys.
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