(indistinct chatter)
-POLICE OFFICER: Excuse us. -ROB: Thank you, guys.
(chatter continues)
Thank you, gents.
POLICE OFFICER: Keep moving! Guys, move on!
(excited chatter continues)
(camera shutter clicks)
-POLICE OFFICER: Keep it moving! -ROB: Sorry, guys.
POLICE OFFICER: Keep going!
(chatter continues)
(soft dramatic music)
-ROB: Wow. -PERSON: Yes, yes, yes.
Not bad, right?
I don't think the goosebumps are 'cause it's cold.
I'm just thinking about how many thousands of people
have come to watch these games over the last 150 years.
-Pretty incredible. -PERSON: Yeah.
RYAN: Oh, wow!
-PERSON: There you go. -RYAN: Come on, now.
Now, that's a stadium.
-Wow. -PERSON: Is that better?
(sighs)
ROB: So there is a real risk for us.
RYAN: Yeah, I mean, that's part of the anxiety.
Like, watching the team lose last night,
you're thinking the investment in this club just took a hit.
Yes.
And there is a version of the story...
where we are villains...
(chuckles)
-Where it doesn't-- -Oh, that's my usual story.
That's usually the story in my head.
ROB: Yeah. It doesn't work, and then we go,
"What are we gonna do? We have to sell it."
-And then we're the bad guys. -RYAN: Yeah.
-Fuck that. -Fuck that.
Yeah.
It's gonna work.
KEB' MO': (singing) Come gather round, people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimming
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin'
(upbeat folk guitar music)
SINGER: (singing) Welcome to Wrexham
A diamond in the heart of Wales
This land of dragons
Coal, fire, and steel
NEWSCASTER: Hollywood A-lister Ryan Reynolds could be
about to take on his next big role.
NEWSCASTER 2: Fellow A-lister Rob McElhenney
is bidding with Reynolds.
They could be about to launch a takeover
at Wrexham Football Club.
I'm hoping this is not some big publicity stunt.
Ah, it's probably just a joke on Twitter.
We've heard it all before, so it'll go tits up, 100%.
Don't get me wrong.
If the intentions are good and to move the club forward,
then fantastic, but we need to know why Wrexham.
SINGER: (singing) Welcome to Wrexham
ALL: E-A-G-L-E-S. Eagles!
(cheers and applause)
(upbeat marching band music playing)
ROB: I'm from Philadelphia,
and I've always been a sports fanatic.
I couldn't play anything, but I always love watching it.
My whole family loved the Eagles.
It was just something that was a part of my life
from the time I can remember.
The team becomes an extension of the city.
-Whoo! Whoo! -LEO: Yeah!
ROB: Even as a kid,
I just remember that gave me something to identify with.
ALL: E-A-G-L-E-S! Eagles!
(cheers and applause)
ROB: I grew up in South Philadelphia...
(whistling)
On the corner of Moyamensing and Dickinson.
The Philadelphia that I know
and the Philadelphia as it identifies itself,
are people who work really hard for everything that they have.
(laughing) Oh, my God.
This is incredible.
(laughs)
Oh, my God.
-This is crazy! -(Bob chuckles)
-This is all exactly the same. -BOB: Exactly the same. Yeah.
ROB: Like, nothing has been changed.
And the best part about this house was the outhouse--
an actual outhouse,
'cause they didn't have downstairs plumbing.
So if you were down here
and you didn't want to go upstairs,
you just went outside to the outhouse.
-ROB: So, Leo... -LEO: Ooh.
What would it be like to share this room...
with your brother?
-LEO: Uh, is it this small? -Yeah.
Like, it would be, like, this exact room.
Honestly, if I could take this, I would.
-(laughter) -ROB: You would?
You want an iPod?
Who doesn't?
ROB: One of the things that was really attractive
about Wrexham is, even though I've never been there,
the town reminds me of Philadelphia.
It's a working-class town. It's a blue-collar town.
It's a town that has had its ups and downs,
and they haven't had all the opportunities
that a lot of other people have had.
I feel like I know those people.
I grew up with those people.
I am one of those people.
(soft dramatic music)
Humphrey, what are the rules?
HUMPHREY: Well, the rules are
our team's trying to put the ball in your goal.
You're trying to put it in our goal.
That's really all you need to know right now.
-Where am I going? -The goal.
KATIE: Yeah, Mom.
-(laughter) -ALL: Hey!
Rob is a new convert
to the charms and joys of football.
(laughter)
Rob and I have worked together and we're friends.
I watch quite a lot of football
in the writers' room during our lunch breaks.
Rob started to be like, "What is this?
Why are you so obsessed with this stupid game?"
(chatter and laughter)
ROB: My mind was racing
when I learned about the English system.
The idea that you can get promoted
into a league above you and demoted
and kicked out of the league is incredible.
HUMPHREY: The English professional football system,
or pyramid, consists of four tiers.
The Premier League at the top of the pyramid,
that's the créme de la créme of football
where you've got your Chelseas,
Manchester Uniteds.
And one tier down from that, you've got the Championship,
then League One and League Two.
So the farther up the pyramid you are,
the better the talent, the bigger the prizes,
and thus the more profitable your club becomes.
Teams can move between tiers via promotion and relegation.
At the end of the season, the best teams go up,
and the worst teams go down.
For the past 14 seasons,
Wrexham have been playing here,
below the pyramid, in the National League,
the lowest level
of professional football in England--
the tiers below being semi-professional.
Being relegated to the National League is...
(inhales sharply) A bit like football purgatory.
The wages are low. The prize money is low.
It makes it very difficult
for clubs like Wrexham that drop into it
to get back into the English football league system.
Imagine, if you will,
the New York Yankees lose 150 games in a season.
They finish dead last,
and they have to drop down a league
and the following year
play against the likes of the Toledo Mud Hens
and the Sacramento River Cats.
And if they keep losing enough
and they keep dropping leagues,
then eventually they end up
playing beer league softball in Ithaca
or against fucking 12-year-olds in Williamsport.
(laughter)
ROB: And then I called Humphrey, and I was like,
"If you had a club that had an infrastructure
"that could at least support
"an even-ing of the balance sheet,
"can't you theoretically take a team that's
in the lowest league and bring them to the top?"
Goal!
He said, "Yes."
But as I started to gather more and more information,
I realized how expensive it was going to be.
I have TV money,
but as I started to look at how expensive
it actually was to run a club,
I realized that I needed something more than TV money.
I needed...
movie-star money.
Sometimes you got to let your heart lead you,
even if you know it's someplace
you know you're not supposed to be.
More than that, I needed superhero movie-star money.
(DMX's "X Gon' Give it To Ya")
Time to make the chimi-fucking-changas.
More than that probably, as we ascended up the leagues,
I would need alcohol-baron money.
Aviation American Gin.
And mobile-phone-services money,
and...
what other companies does this bitch have?
-PRODUCER: Cybersecurity. -Cybersecurity money.
(laughs)
And--anybody?
What else has he got?
YOUNG ADAM: Ah!
(tense music)
What the fuck? That--I mean--
PERSON: That was great.
RYAN: In a PG-13 movie like this,
you get one "fuck," two "shits," and a glass of white wine,
and then you say, "Hang on to your PG-13 rating."
(upbeat music)
I grew up in a working-class family,
and I have three older brothers.
My father struggled in a number of different ways.
My dad started as a cop, then became a food broker,
which sounds like a cover for a CIA agent or something,
but that was his actual job.
Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God,
oh, my God, oh, my God!
The main place I got validation from my father--
like, if I was good at sports,
in my father's eyes, I was doing all right.
So I played sports long past the point
where I was, like, really driven to play sports.
PERSON: Go back to, like-- yeah, right here.
-RYAN: Yeah. -PERSON: Yeah. Here we go.
(imitates whoosh)
It carried on, it carried on all through show business,
all that, so, you know,
it's like an unquenchable thirst for validation.
-YOUNG ADAM: Aah! -(imitates explosions)
My father's been dead for years, but, like,
it's, you know, you kind of--
stuff doesn't really go away.
It's easier to sort of think of him, you know,
the way I'm describing him, as, like, a really hard-ass.
He would have thought all of this was wild.
Like, you know, he didn't really see any of the stuff
Deadpool forward,
so I think he would have thought this was all pretty crazy.
-(cell phone ringing) -ROB: Ryan's FaceTiming me.
Hey, you look great.
HUMPHREY: All you two do is tell each other you look great.
Yeah. I know. It's just constantly--
HUMPHREY: Why it's such a successful friendship.
-He seems insecure. -(laughs)
ROB: I don't really know Ryan that well.
I've never met him in person before this.
We met through social media and then just became friends.
Great. So that one should work,
but as long as it's not-- yes, that should work.
Today is the call to the Wrexham Supporters Trust.
Because it is a club that is owned by the fans,
we have to persuade them to vote us through
by a 75-25 margin.
It's quite a high bar, but that was put in place
'cause it had terrible owners in the past,
and so people wanted to make sure that if they were gonna
vote for anyone, it was the right person.
RYAN: So, you know, we created a proposal
and really made sure
that we conveyed to the community our intentions.
ROB: In terms of trust,
they have been burned before
-by shady people. -Mm-hmm.
ROB: But we're not some shady businessmen
that can just, like,
if this goes south, like, lurk into the shadows
and pretend like it never happened
and just go back to our lives.
No. People know where to find us.
-ROB: Yes, yes. -(Ryan chuckles)
ROB: At stake today is whether or not we get to become
the next stewards of Wrexham Football Club.
So if it goes south, then we won't.
This is a very high-profile thing with a lot at stake,
and we really don't want to let them down,
and I think we can speak to that.
I don't know that we necessarily can speak
so much to, "You have to trust us,"
'cause then it feels a little Harold Hill to me.
-Yeah, great. -And I feel like--yeah.
-Great. All right. Awesome. -Great.
-All right. -I will, uh--(chuckles)
I will see you soon. Bye.
Ah, he got the last word in.
Fuck. I got to--
(soft music)
BRIAN: Hello, everybody. I hope you can hear me okay.
My name's Brian Phillips.
I'm the chair of Wrexham Supporters Trust,
and I want to welcome members
and our special guests
to this very special presentation evening.
-Please note... -Sweating.
JAMES: I would like to invite Rob McElhenney
and Ryan Reynolds on screen.
Hey, hey.
JAMES: They will talk you through some key questions
about their proposed takeover of Wrexham AFC.
We'll start with-- if you could talk us through
what yours and Rob's vision for the club is
if members decide to entrust it to you.
I think I just want to start by ripping the Band-Aid off
and addressing the fact that this is all pretty...
(chuckles) Pretty wild.
I'm sure it's got to be a little disconcerting
that a Canadian and an American are so interested in your club,
but we want to assure everyone on this call
that we are taking this venture very seriously.
I don't care if you're a movie star.
I don't care if you're driving a forklift.
When you're in a situation
where you're seeking the approval of other people,
your brain is always going, "They're gonna say no.
They don't--they're on to me."
Imposter syndrome is in full effect.
JAMES: Rob, could you answer first?
And I guess it's the big question--
why Wrexham AFC?
When I tell people
that the Eagles winning the Super Bowl
was one of the greatest days of my life--
it was top five greatest days of my life...
-(all cheering) -That's it! They got it!
People who are supporters of clubs
and sporting fans across the world
know exactly what I'm talking about, and I mean it.
I put it up there with the birth of my children
and my wedding day
not because of what happened on the field,
but because of what it meant to an entire community of people
and to my relationships with my friends
and my family members
and the entire city of Philadelphia.
I really believe that we can build something like that,
and I want to be there for that.
I want to be a part of that,
and I hope that you will allow us
to help you achieve something like that.
RYAN: Should the majority of the supporters
decide that we're the guys for the job,
we would be honored and thrilled,
and we would never, ever once take that lightly.
We will laugh at ourselves,
but we will never laugh at the situation.
Well, thank you, gentlemen, for your time this evening.
-Thank you. -Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
(soft music)
There you go.
And now it's in the people's hands.
It is.
I thought that went very, very well.
-Yeah. -HUMPHREY: Agreed.
You know what was one of my favorite parts was
when they asked about the documentary
and you could see the giant camera behind you...
-ROB: Oh, for real? -(laughing) Filming. Yes.
Yes, so I was so glad you were like--
right away, you were like,
"Oh, yeah, hell, yeah, we're doing a documentary."
I was like, "Yeah, we're making a documentary,
like, right this fucking second."
Well, what the fuck? That's your responsibility.
RYAN: I can see a gigantic--
Is that an IMAX camera? Like, what the fuck?
SPENCER: A lot of people outside the UK
aren't even aware that Wales is not in England.
It's a separate country.
It's on the west coast of the UK,
and Wrexham's a town of about 65,000 people
in the northeast of Wales.
Wrexham was a nice place to grow up.
It was a really safe place
where communities pull together.
And of course, when I was growing up,
we had a really good football team.
As a child, my father took me to games,
and I can remember back then,
we were what is now known as the Championship
or the level below the Premier League.
(cheers and applause)
It's the third-oldest professional club
in the world.
It's the oldest club in Wales,
and it plays at the Cae Ras, or the Racecourse in English,
which is the oldest international stadium
still in use anywhere in the world.
And for many, many years, Wrexham were Wales' best club.
COMMENTATOR: And it's Thomas who takes it.
Oh, what a goal! Mickey Thomas!
BRYN: When I started watching Wrexham,
we had a team of heroes in those days.
Wrexham's crowds would compare favorably with many clubs,
even sometimes in top divisions
in other countries in Europe.
Three, two, one, fire.
(explosion)
BRYN: But by the very early '80s,
Wrexham became a very depressed town
with incredibly high levels of unemployment.
(barking)
PERSON: People have asked me, "What's Wrexham like?"
I've just said, "Don't go."
-"It's a load of rubbish." -(laughs)
PERSON: "You're wasting your time."
BRYN: The football club
was impacted by hard times as well.
In a small place, the fortunes of the town
and its team are inextricably intertwined.
The two absolutely depend upon one another.
Wrexham is a town that battles
against odds constantly.
It really is a place where people deserve
a little bit more than maybe they've got out of life.
But the thing that we love more than anything...
is the football club.
(Apashe ft. Instasamka's "Uebok [Gotta Run]")
SINGER: (rapping in Russian)
Holy shit, holy shit, ujobok, gotta run
Make a hit, make a hit, we ain't here for fun
Holy shit, holy shit, jeto hit and run
Make a hit, make a hit, like a machine gun
SHAUN: Wrexham-- we're the fifth tier
of professional football.
We are the bottom level of the professional game.
LUKE: Professional football is everybody,
whether you're in the National League
or Premier League, but there is a big difference
in terms of lifestyle, money.
HUMPHREY: The average salary
for a Premier League footballer
is about £3 1/2 million a year.
A player in the National League will be making...a bit less.
(cash register bell rings, winds down)
SINGER: (singing) Gotta run, make a hit
CHRISTIAN: You tell people
you're a professional footballer,
and instantly they think flash car, nice house,
and it's not. It's not like that.
(crowd clamoring)
Absolute fucking disaster!
LAINTON: A lot of times, you can actually hear
someone calling you shit or...
(laughs)
Yeah.
(laughs)
SINGER: (singing) Ujobok, ujobok, ujobok
TYLER: Even playing at this level and getting paid for it,
it still is living the dream.
I know the dream is the top, but this is still a dream.
SINGER: (singing) Ujobok, holy shit
REECE: When you're in the non-league,
you've got to grind for everything,
you got to work hard for everything,
you got to pay for everything,
but I think as a football-- it's the same game.
You're still playing football. You're still enjoying it.
DANIEL: Promotion's the goal. We want to win the league.
We want to be the best team in the league by a mile.
JORDAN: Getting back into that fourth tier,
the League Two, would be amazing for the club,
'cause if you get back into the fourth tier,
you get a lot of funding from the football league.
PAUL: I'm really excited the takeover's happening
because they can improve the whole town as a collective
in terms of the infrastructure of the town.
You know, the stadium will likely improve.
LUKE: This club's obviously been down in this league
for a long time now, and as captain,
I'd love to get to the end of my career and look back
on being the one that led it back into the football league.
WAYNE: Doo-do-doo.
All right, then, with all that said, what we going for?
If we get an early goal, 2-nil, Wrexham.
-WAYNE: 2-nil? -If we get an early goal.
(stately music)
WAYNE: Dave-o, what do you think?
I'll go 1-nil.
I just can't see us keeping 'em out.
We just--we're not confident. I think I'm gonna go 1-1.
I hope I'm wrong,
but we just don't score enough goals, do we?
(folk music)
(car alarm beeps)
SPENCER: I'm a volunteer at the club.
I joined the trust board nine years ago
as Director, Wrexham AFC,
and what I do is I manage the budget.
I organize all board meetings, all agendas.
I tend to be the person who deals with media
and more or less the face of the club
from a business side.
I've got a r eally big day job for a multinational company,
which means I work long hours anyway during the week.
And at weekends,
I've given everything to the football club that I can.
I've prioritized it over career advancement,
over family.
(indistinct chatter)
This season, it's been very, very challenging,
given global pandemic.
We weren't allowed to have supporters in the stadium,
which was the main source of income for the football club.
BRYN: Because of the pandemic, no fans coming into the ground
to pay the one major income stream--
there's no broadcast money at this level.
It's what comes in through the turnstiles
is the major revenue raiser, and from March onwards,
nobody's been coming in to football stadia
to support the teams.
(indistinct chatter)
(soft dramatic music)
So how are the clubs like Wrexham gonna survive?
It's an extremely uncertain future
that Wrexham was looking at.
Face the ball, face the ball!
So the takeover, from Wrexham's perspective,
the timing was-- could not have been better.
(indistinct shouting)
SPENCER: In my view, getting out of the National League
is the hardest job in world football.
FOOTBALLER: Come on, then!
-(whistle blows) -ALL: Yeah!
SPENCER: And I think if the club wants to get out
of the National League, it needs to change.
If Rob and Ryan can bring that change, then fantastic.
(sizzling)
WAYNE: Thank you very much.
(laughs)
(soft dramatic music)
The home of Wrexham Football Club--
the Turf Hotel.
(upbeat music)
The club was founded in this very building,
which sits directly outside
the main entrance to the grounds.
(stately music)
The bar is always five or six deep.
My parents were regulars here,
and I remember coming to this pub
after the match and they've won.
And the jukebox is blaring,
and people are singing, and people are happy.
And from that minute on, I was absolutely hooked.
We had the badge built into the wall.
That was just my way of, you know,
keeping the pub and the club connected.
In my 13 years of being here, we've only ever closed one day.
We open 365 days a year.
We even open on Christmas Day and Christmas night,
but like every other pub,
we've been closed because of COVID.
You can't put into words what it means to people.
You know, it's almost like losing a limb,
because people say it's only a game, but it's not.
It's more than that, you know?
This football club means everything
to people in this town.
Anybody that you speak to will tell you
it's been a real difficult decade.
The past owners that we've had--
and are they here for the wrong reasons?
So you still don't allow yourself to believe
that this could happen.
But this set of supporters, this town,
this community deserves a break.
(computer chimes)
Hello.
-Mustache is gone. -ROB: Oh, yeah.
Yep. I'm no longer on camera, so...
SPENCER: Well, here we are,
after what feels like an age, right?
I have actual butterflies right now.
As you know, the threshold on the vote was high.
So you needed to get a 75% or more
of those voting for-- for this to pass.
The turnout was massive, right?
91.5% of people who could vote voted.
Wow.
On resolution one, it was a 98.6% for.
-BOTH: Wow. -On resolution two,
it was a 98.4% for, and on resolution three,
it was a 98.4% for, so...
(Ryan chuckles)
An overwhelming and resounding yes.
So congratulations and really well done.
"Llongyfarchiadau," we say in Wales.
-(laughter) -Thank you.
SPENCER: Really looking forward to the journey.
When you wake up tomorrow,
the announcement will be out there,
and let the fun commence.
(fireworks whistling, popping)
(all chanting indistinctly)
SPENCER: It's not 100% in their control
that they're gonna get this club promoted,
but if they do that,
it will be one of the biggest days
in the history of the town.
NEWSCASTER: The Red Army had something to sing about
this afternoon.
ANNOUNCER: (speaking German)
ANNOUNCER: (speaking Spanish)
A good moment to congratulate Ryan Reynolds
and Rob McElhenney for their recent purchase
of Wrexham Football Club.
(triumphant musical flourish)
(child giggles, seagull cries)