MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Another promotion is within touching distance for Wrexham.
The Welsh soccer team has been propelled to worldwide fame by co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. It has also been propelled up the league in double-quick time, having been a down-on-its-luck minor league team when the Hollywood pair completed their unlikely buyout in 2021.
At this rate, Wrexham could be playing in the Premier League next year.
One step at a time, but if results go its way on Saturday, Wrexham will seal promotion to the Championship — the second tier of English soccer.
There it will mix with the likes of Leicester — a Premier League champion in 2016, Champions League quarterfinalist in 2017 and FA Cup winner in 2021; the same year as Reynolds and McElhenney changed the fortunes of Wrexham forever.
With two games to go this season, Wrexham is in second place in League One and will be promoted if it beats Charlton on Saturday and third-place Wycombe loses or draws against Leyton Orient. Birmingham, at the top of the standings, is already up.
“I have, literally, like an 8-inch ulcer in my stomach right now because it’s the end of the season," Deadpool star Reynolds told the TIME100 Summit this week. “It all comes down to the next two weeks. They just can’t do it easy, like just one year let’s do it without having receding hairlines all around. We’re all losing it. Stress (is) killing us.”
It would be typically Wrexham to take it to the final game. And it is the team's taste for drama, last-gasp wins and losses, that has helped make the globally-streamed docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham” so popular.
“That’s not a consolation at all,” Reynolds said.
While there have been moments of high drama during Wrexham's rise under Reynolds and McElhenney, if anything, success is becoming all too predictable.
This would be a third straight promotion, defying the odds even with the financial boost that comes with having celebrity owners. Just ask the group of Manchester United greats, including David Beckham, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs, who haven't managed to rise beyond League Two with their team Salford, despite pumping money and fame into the club.
Indeed, Wrexham passed Salford on its way up the league and would be within one division of Manchester United if it secures promotion.
Success has come both on and off the field given the ongoing popularity of its hit streaming series and a record turnover of 26.7 million pounds ($34.5 million) last season, a 155% rise, which helped repay all of its loans to shareholders.
The down-on-its-luck element of the Wrexham story has been left in the past. It is now an upwardly mobile team fast-approaching the top tier of English soccer.
With that in mind Charlton manager Nathan Jones could have chosen his words more wisely when describing Wrexham as a “circus” this week.
“It is a lack of respect to our owners, the team, the staff, the supporters and the heritage of Wrexham Football Club," manager Phil Parkinson told local newspaper The Leader. "But we will just concentrate on what we’ve got to do,”
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James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
James Robson, The Associated Press
