Welcome to Wrexham (2022)
2023; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/21558450.50.1.09
ISSN2155-8450
Autores ResumoIn the last two decades, American billionaires (and a few interloping paltry hundred millionaires) have bought majority or minority stakes in European football teams, ranging from some of the giant names in the sport (AC Milan, Olympique Marseilles, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool) to teams in lower levels within the football pyramids of Britain, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany and in smaller leagues across Europe. So in a sense, two rich North American actors buying a National League team in Wales might seem like just another ego gratification project, even more so when they go about immediately turning that project into a television documentary. Two North American actors buy a team in a sport they know nothing about and immediately jump in front of the cameras to tout that lark. Do vanity projects get more vain? Yet Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who purchased Wrexham Football Club in North Wales and are at the center of the documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, seem more akin to Ted Lasso, the earnest and kind (and fictional) manager of AFC Richmond from the eponymous and beloved Apple TV show Ted Lasso, than they do to Malcolm Glazer, the almost cartoonishly dastardly late owner of Manchester United. Man Utd is a team equally beloved and hated in global soccer circles and for whom, therefore, Glazer might have accidentally been the ideal owner.There will be those who gripe that the Hollywood stars' very ownership of Wrexham is an affront to real football. This is ultimately an appeal to authenticity, a Texan screaming "no beans in chili!"; an indie rock fan sneering, "I saw them before they were famous." It's an actual "it's not soccer, it's football" argument.1 These are criticisms born of both resentment of outsiders finding something appealing about the thing they love and of condescension toward those same people. In his book Games Without Frontiers, Joe Kennedy writes about fetishizing authenticity and the inherent contradiction contained therein: "To embrace authenticity in football seems like a massive gamble, a roll of the dice which might well feel overly quiescent in the face of oligarch ownership, radical mediatisation, robotic refereeing, Qatari World Cups and so on. But falling back on the trope of 'real' fandom seems to me just as dangerous, a path that leads to one-downmanship and wheedling obscurantism."2But to be a sports fan is also to invest in a history, and as important, in a historical narrative. For generations, for example, Boston Red Sox fans inherited the so-called Curse of the Bambino, a supposed hex cast upon the franchise after owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, resulting in eighty-six years of frustration. Red Sox fans also inherited or took on other aspects of history—the exploits of Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski, Pudge Fisk's midnight home run in game 6 of the 1975 World Series, and the ball between Bill Buckner's legs in another fateful game 6 in 1986. For self-aware fans, the inheritance also includes a shameful history of racism. Subsequently Red Sox fans have inherited four World Series wins and the exploits of Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz and Mookie Betts. Every sport, indeed virtually every team, has these inherited histories.Football, soccer (and I will unapologetically use these words interchangeably), is rife with these inherited histories—and given the nature of the football pyramid, with promotion and relegation, there are dozens—indeed hundreds—of these histories in the UK (and Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and so forth). Local football clubs, whether at the very highest level of the Premier League, or in a regional club with few trophies, are immersed in their own histories and traditions (real and invented). Wrexham FC, the Red Dragons, or Reds, play in the National League, the fifth level of English (which includes Welsh) football, the top level of the pyramid below the pyramid, not (yet) in the League proper, and somewhere in the middle of the footballing world—professional, but a long way from Anfield or Old Trafford. It is a club with a great deal of history, with its loyalists and its critics, and it is working-class Wrexham's team. They are supposedly the third oldest professional club on Earth, the oldest in Wales, and they play at the beloved but crumbling Racecourse Ground, the oldest international stadium still in use for football.McElhenney, one of the stars and the main creative force behind the misanthropic sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is very clear that to invest in a football club he needs movie star money, superhero money, and not mere TV money. He enlists Reynolds (Deadpool, most prominently, among many others). One of the running jokes across the series is Reynolds's relative movie-fame status when compared to McElhenney's cable-TV fame, despite McElhenney being a true-blue sports fan (of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles in particular) and the motivating force behind purchasing a professional soccer team. The two were social media acquaintances but not really friends—they met in person for the first time in the process of purchasing Wrexham FC—but they have a pretty natural chemistry. Reynolds has an earnest bearing, but McElhenney seems the more honest of the two. One gets the sense that McElhenney is what he seems to be. For Reynolds, one wonders if this is not just another role.And while the buying of Wrexham might seem a lark, Wrexham supporters, and the Trust many of them make up, are skeptical. They have been burned before and as a result are inclined toward cynicism. Alex Hamilton, the unctuous and villainous previous owner, was disastrous for the club and created considerable ill will. This merely accelerated the supporters' deep cynicism. He had used a front man as chair for the purpose of stripping the club for assets, working with property developers who wanted to tear down the stadium and who did not give a damn about the glory of a downtrodden football club in the Wales hinterlands. This is the culmination of a real and painful history—not a romantic, or romanticized one: a history of terrible ownership, of vampire investors who sought to suck the life-blood out of Wrexham FC, instrumentalizing the club for the purpose of larger development goals.This painful past leads to serious interrogations about the celebrity purchase of their beloved club: "Why us?" and "Why them?" "Are they going to have the best interest of the club at heart?" These are the questions that ring through the community's fan base.The fact that the seeds of the documentary were already planted even as the two stars set about making the purchase does not exactly assuage some of the biggest skeptics. And indeed, for viewers, the obvious question is, just how much suspense was there behind the ability to purchase the club if a documentary is already under way? Are the TV and film stars above-board, or are they just passable actors auditioning for a starring role in a quasi-documentary with the Racecourse Ground as a backdrop, the team and fans as extras? Yet with about 98 percent support, the voters who make up the Trust, and who came out in droves, approved their ownership bid. (It would have been a rather short documentary otherwise.) Wrexham, despite the concerns of the fan base, put its faith in two actors who knew little about the world's preeminent version of football.With their ownership secured, the fundamental narrative emerges: can Wrexham, with the investment and support of their famous new owners, win promotion to League 2 and the Football League proper? But amid this on-pitch struggle is also the revelation of the myriad difficulties of life in the fifth tier—constant expenses amid limited resources, a plight exacerbated by eighteen months of COVID-19 restrictions that had the team playing before empty seats. They bring in Humphrey Ker—a London-born actor (who in 2018 appeared on an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and football fan to serve as Wrexham FC's executive director, adding to the hint of glamour but perhaps also providing a bridge between Hollywood and football cultures.Even after buying the team, Reynolds and McElhenney still do not own the Racecourse Grounds, a dilemma that takes a lot more bureaucratic wrangling to solve than the owners could have imagined. They obviously want to buy the facility, "the crown jewel of north Wales," a goal that finally comes to fruition after considerable politicking and delay, fulfilling a promise from their mission statement and garnering them considerable goodwill from the still-skeptical local Wrexham supporters.On the pitch, the team struggles early on but fights to climb into the league title chase. The team that tops the league earns automatic promotion, with a playoff among the next four teams for the remaining spots. They climb from the bottom half of the league into contention as the season progresses. Perhaps someone should have heeded the warning from Ted Lasso: It's the hope that kills you.The locals, Wrexham loyalists from all walks of life, are the real stars of the show, causing some legitimately powerful, emotional moments. Michael Hett, the lead singer of Declan Swans, who perform the local hit "Always Sunny in Wrexham" (and who is seen performing in a "fuck the Tories" t-shirt in a rare display of overt politics beyond those surrounding the football club) is fighting cancer. Shaun Winter, a single dad, is newly divorced and trying to reconcile the end of his marriage while living and dying by Wrexham outcomes. Arthur Massey is ninety-six years old (at the time of filming) and attended his first match at the age of seven in 1931. Kerry Evans is a wheelchair-bound disability advocate who volunteers in that capacity for Wrexham and who sees her volunteer job turned into a full-time paid position. This whole world seems to revolve around Racecourse Ground-adjacent Turf Hotel—a pub deeply connected with the club, with charismatic, articulate, and, of course, Wrexham FC—mad Wayne Jones as proprietor and in some ways embodying the soul of the fandom.We meet one supporter after another with the football club as the fulcrum for men and women, old and young, and as shown in one powerful entire episode, dads and sons. McElhenney and Reynolds insist that their gambit is "all about community," and certainly the community shines in the documentary simulacrum of this real-life story. One can assume that no one is happier about the celebrity purchase of the local football club than Wrexham's tourist board.The Declan Swans' catchy little semi-hit is not the only use of music in the series. Indeed, it is not even the only Wrexham-themed song, a status it shares with John Hughes's "Welcome to Wrexham." Keb' Mo's version of "The Times They Are a Changin'" is used as the theme for the first and last episodes, an attempt, perhaps, to appropriate a certain kind of idealistic political gravity. Viewers may debate if the entire largely apolitical endeavor earns this treatment. The main theme of the show in the other episodes is Buddy Holly's perhaps more appropriately lighthearted "Everyday."The series also takes on a series of serious topics, albeit gently, mostly on the surface, tackling hooliganism, for example, and questions of race and class. In the early stages in particular there is also the impact of COVID-19. The club went a year and a half without fans in the Racecourse Ground, a particularly devastating financial hit for the sort of club that relies on gate receipts in a way that bigger clubs, with their TV contracts and global revenue streams, do not. The series never plumbs the sorts of depths on these issues that might please academics, but then to criticize the show for not doing so—for not being a different show with a different purpose—would fall into the hoariest of academic clichés of critiquing something for not being what it was never intended to be.McElhenney and Reynolds engage in self-mockery and know that there could be criticism coming their way, but it was obviously all self-selected. There was certainly mocking of the two owners, but they controlled the mocking. They could afford to be gracious, to be self-aware, because they were the heroes who got to dictate the narrative. It is cute that McElhenney is capable of mocking his own status relative to that of his more famous movie star chum. It humanizes both of them. But they are both firmly in control of that humanization at every step. For all we know, both might be vainglorious jerks. Their documentary is not going to let us know (and for what it is worth, they do come across as fundamentally good guys).As much a target of gentle mockery as the naïve owners is the American audience. The show is full of "translations" of British soccer terms into both Welsh and into American English. In a sense, this shows another connection to Ted Lasso, the idea of interlopers who are out of their element. One episode, a mockumentary inside the documentary called "Wide World of Wales," pokes fun at Wales, the neophyte owners, and as much as anything the presumed American audience by playing up (rightfully) presumed US ignorance of Wales (and by extension, American ignorance of the rest of the world).One question remains: Why Wrexham? McElhenney and Reynolds could have chosen any one of dozens of similarly situated clubs or cities not only in the English football pyramid, but worldwide. Indeed, while there are teams in the lower reaches of British football in or near cities, the bulk are going to be located in places like Wrexham—small and mid-sized cities, many of which have seen better days, places that the prosperity of neoliberal capitalism have left behind. Mining communities (like Wrexham), communities with once prosperous mills now shut down, communities with deserted factories whose work has been exported to places with exploitable cheap labor, market towns whose markets no longer flourish. Any of these communities likely has an underfunded football team with its own history, its own loyal fans, its own stories of heartbreak and missed opportunity. There is no reason to believe that "Welcome to Maidenhead" would not have been as compelling, that the infusions of resources and attention would not have paid off as handsomely.Speaking of which, we are far enough removed from the airing of the documentary and the season in question to worry about spoilers from the fifth tier of English soccer. Nonetheless, if you are waiting to find out for yourself, avoid the next three paragraphs.Wrexham had a good season in 2021–2022, though they did not top the table and earn automatic promotion and they were knocked out of the league's promotion playoffs, guaranteeing yet another year trying to poke their noses inside the tent of the Football League. But indicative of the quality the team had come to embody, they also made the FA Cup finals, losing but garnering considerable attention and putting them in a good position to build from in 2022–2023.Toward the end of the documentary season, Rob McElhenney said, "We're going to achieve promotion—I promise. This town deserves it." The 2022–23 Wrexham side, drawing greater attention than any before in its history, becoming a global brand despite playing in the lower reaches of professional football, fulfilled this prediction, earning automatic promotion by dominating the National League for most of the season.3 No promotion playoffs required for the Dragons. It should not come as a surprise that money and influence can make a difference in the lower ranks of professional sports, especially in the world outside of the United States with league pyramids that have promotion and relegation processes. The irony of Wrexham ultimately being promoted is that they will eventually go from the team benefitting from having Hollywood owners back to being underdogs—certainly by the time teams get to the Championship, the second tier of the English hierarchy, owners tend to be billionaire conglomerates, not two reasonably wealthy individuals infusing a little cash into a cash-desperate level of the sport.In late April 2023—soon after Wrexham earned promotion—Disney+ announced that there would be a second season of Welcome to Wrexham. Of course there will be. By now, after all, differentiating the documentary series from the characters that are the team's owners from the team is not cost-effective. But elite sport is about imitation and trends (and imitators of trends). Do not be surprised if Wrexham's successes lead to imitators. Whether this is good or bad will be in the eye of the beholder. Or at least of the trophy holder. C'mon TV and movie stars. Your Maidenhead awaits.
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