Wrexham have not only been on a remarkable journey under Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, but have been able to share it with the world.
Wrexham had been stuck in non-league football more than 10 years before Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds emerged as unlikely saviours.
Few could have expected a Hollywood takeover at Wrexham but McElhenney and Reynolds showed up and nothing has been the same since.
McElhenney and Reynolds paid £2million for Wrexham and have turned the club into one of the most talked-about football teams across the world.
The community around Wrexham has been featured prominently on ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ whilst fans all over the globe have taken Wrexham to their hearts.
The success hasn’t just been off the pitch; Wrexham have won back-to-back promotions under Phil Parkinson and are now chasing a third.
Ryan Reynolds shares bleak Wrexham message
Wrexham’s rise shows no sign of slowing down with McElhenney and Reynolds at the helm.
Reynolds spoke at the Obama Foundation 2024 Democracy Forum last week and spoke in depth about Wrexham.
Reynolds admitted a Wrexham tradition, snatching a piece of the STōK Cae Ras pitch to take back home with him.
The ‘Deadpool’ star also shared a story about how Wrexham fans first reacted to him and McElhenney purchasing the club.
Reynolds remembers the ‘why us’ questions around Wrexham as fans were left baffled as to why two Hollywood stars would invest in a middling National League side at the time.
One Wrexham supporter then suggested to McElhenney and Reynolds that nothing good ever happens in Wrexham and nothing good would ever happen for her.
Reynolds felt that this was a real statement and one which was mirrored by a number of Wrexham fans, but he completely disagreed with it.
Reynolds felt that mindset was ‘so not true’ and believes in the adage that ‘the high tide raises all boats’, believing in widespread joy and benefit from investment – not just financially but emotionally too.
“People felt like ‘why us?’ – that was everything in the first year,” said Reynolds.
“It was ‘why us’ and I remember one woman said to Rob ‘nothing good ever happens here and nothing good will ever happen to me’ and I just thought… that is so not true but wow, that is a statement.
“It was very pervasive at the time but the high tide raises all boats,” he added.
Ryan Reynolds describes Wrexham to US audience
In terms of foreign fans, Wrexham have become especially popular in the United States.
American fans have really connected with the Wrexham story, not just as a club but as a community and as a city.
Even former NFL quarterback Joey Harrington is now a Wrexham fan.
Two major celebrities in McElhenney and Reynolds certainly help, but many Americans see themselves and their towns in the Wrexham story.
Reynolds told the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum that Wrexham is similar to so many places in America, in that they had a boom period but ended up finding that hard times brought more hard times.
“Wrexham is Scranton, it’s a lot of towns in northern New York, it’s a bit of Syracuse – places that have had a moment in time where they’re boom towns with coal and steel and that kind off stuff, then it fell on hard times and hard times tend to galvanise more and more hard times,” said Reynolds.
“The thing I found most fascinating was approaching it with a non-interventionist attitude, that we are here to tell a story but we don’t want to be the story – even if we are the story sometimes,” he added.
McElhenney and Reynolds are very busy with their various commitments from acting to other investments, but it’s great to see how invested they are in Wrexham as a whole – and many other North American owners could learn a thing or two from them.