In the days leading up to Wrexham AFC‘s third-round FA Cup match against Coventry City earlier this month, Ryan Reynolds wanted to believe an upset was coming.
For the Red Dragons, who play in the fifth-tier National League, a win against a team from the Championship — three levels higher on the English soccer pyramid — would stand as the team’s most significant achievement since the A-list movie star known for the “Deadpool” franchise and fellow actor Rob McElhenney (star and co-creator of FX series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) secured ownership of the Welsh club in 2021.
“You always hope that you’re going to rout the big boys in some amazing fashion,” Reynolds told ESPN. “But honestly, I was hoping we would score.”
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When Sam Dalby scored to put Wrexham up just 12 minutes in, Reynolds’ nervous energy didn’t exactly go away. Watching from his New York City apartment — joined by his wife, actor Blake Lively, and their three young daughters — the early goal might have made the whole viewing experience even more stressful. Especially when a second followed just six minutes later and the idea of Wrexham getting through to the next round of the world’s oldest national soccer competition suddenly morphed into something that felt real.
“I was pacing around like some sort of rabid drug-snorting tiger,” Reynolds said.
With his family on the couch, Reynolds continued pacing around the coffee table — screaming and yelling at the TV — as Wrexham built a 4-1 lead and, exhaustively, hung on to win 4-3.
“Part of my indoctrination of the sport is being around others who have been passionate about it since they exited the womb,” Reynolds said. “That’s kind of rubbed off on me and I think that rubs off on my own family now.”
Quantifying Wrexham’s newfound reach is an inexact science, but consider this: In September 2019, the Wrexham AFC Wikipedia page was visited 16,181 times. In September 2022, that number grew to 809,410, a rise of 4,902%. The spike in views that month almost certainly was a direct result of the release of the FX documentary series “Welcome to Wrexham,” which started airing its 18-episode first season on Aug. 24.
Over the past year, Wrexham’s Wikipedia page has averaged 266,573 monthly views, and while that isn’t as many as the traditional “Big Six” teams in the Premier League over the same period (Manchester United 657K; Chelsea 482K; Liverpool 453K, Manchester City 413K; Arsenal 400K; Tottenham Hotspur 293K), it’s more than every other current team in that league. In the National League, no other team is remotely comparable. Notts County, Wrexham’s primary promotion rival this season, averages about 38,000 views a month.
By October 2022, two months after “Welcome to Wrexham” had premiered, Wrexham had reached a combined one million followers across its various social media platforms. The club now has 320,000 followers on Twitter and 577,000 on TikTok (compared to Notts County’s followers at 88,000 and 2,750 respectively).
Reynolds is used to being stopped on the street. Such is life as one of the most recognizable people on the planet. But in the past few months — and particularly since the FA Cup win against Coventry — the approaches in New York have been different.
“They’re not stopping me to talk about ‘Deadpool’ or any other [movie] project,” he said. “They’re stopping me on the street to talk about Wrexham. I got so many people fist-bumping me saying, ‘Congrats on the Coventry game.’ That was wild to see.”
