They had to fix this one weird door, deep in the bowels of their stadium, that inexplicably oozed grease.Īll such concerns were forgotten when the afternoon game kicked off, to massive roars and chanting. They had to try to revive the fortunes of a team adrift, while persuading a city to trust them. Reynolds and McElhenney's to-do list at Wrexham was long and various. But here the two men stood, beside a billboard that advertised asbestos removal. Reynolds, having recently finished shooting a musical version of a Dickens novel, had a comedy costarring Gal Gadot and Dwayne Johnson ready to premiere. Someone's handmade sign read, not so truthfully, "It's always sunny in Wrexham.” In their Hollywood guises, McElhenney was about to debut a record-breaking 15th season of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In the opposite stand there was a fan wearing a tight scarlet jumpsuit that paid homage to Reynolds in his superhero movies. "Bring on the Deadpool," went the flattering, singalong chorus, "and Rob MACK-er-LAY-nee." The two owners stepped on to the balcony to cheers. It was a Brit-pop-like ballad, written by a musician from the city to commemorate Reynolds and McElhenney's takeover. Now the strains of a song drifted in through the doors of the owners' lounge. You feel a history, a legacy that's woven into the stands and the rusting bars." The place is bigger than it looked onscreen, and I mean that figuratively. ![]() "You're watching games for the better part of a year on a shitty YouTube feed," he said. Since acquiring the club six months prior, they'd been following their team's progress from afar, on computers, Reynolds explained. The shabby signage, the peeling surfaces, it was all proof of a long-running story they'd bought themselves into. So the smell of tired and moldering concrete delighted the new owners. Wrexham AFC had been founded shortly afterward, making it one of the oldest sports teams in the world. ![]() A sporting venue had stood on this site in some form or another since the 1860s. The stadium had no permanent scoreboard.īut like parents who try to see the best in their complicated offspring, Reynolds and McElhenney were alive to the charm and detail in things. An enormous concrete terrace had been condemned before they took over here, and now sprouting brown weeds, it was hidden under tarp. Sun gleamed off battered folding chairs, showing stains and scratches. As they stared out of their lounge, Reynolds and McElhenney might have been having a few doubts themselves. It had perplexed almost everybody who paid attention to sports. ![]() ![]() That two Hollywood stars should act on a curious impulse (more than a whim, less than a life-long ambition) and invest millions of their dollars in Wrexham had perplexed almost everybody inside these city limits. "Nervous," Reynolds confessed, as McElhenney joined him by the balcony doors. They were about to watch their first home game as owners. With his friend Rob McElhenney, the American actor and creator of the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, he had taken over the local soccer team, an ancient, lowly, success-starved outfit called Wrexham AFC. The Canadian actor and entrepreneur, figurehead of the Deadpool movie franchise and an investor with a sprawling list of financial commitments to his name, had been in Wrexham for three days, having never set foot in the city before. From here, Reynolds could watch as hundreds, then thousands, of expectant fans found their seats. He was in an owners’ lounge, high to one side of a soccer stadium in the city of Wrexham in Wales, a few miles west of the Welsh-English border. Ryan Reynolds, restless as a trapped cat, broke off his pacing and stooped to peer through plate glass balcony doors.
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