Loved the show, but I’d stopped paying attention to what they were doing recently. Amazing to see them climb to the Championship given where they were a couple of years ago. Unprecedented, obviously, as the article points out.

Money Changes Everything...

To be fair though, you can’t just win on money alone. I haven’t paid attention to Wrexham’s last couple of seasons, but the article says they spent wisely rather than frivolously, and Phil Parkinson seems to have done a great job. When I watched the first couple of seasons of the show it seemed like they were lucky they didn’t just go bankrupt — even with the money it could have been a disaster if they didn’t do everything else right.

with the Emirates and the billionaire industrialists who own Premier League is staggering I imagine.

Promotions vary but basically if you win the championship you move up. There’s a tournament of the next 3 or 4 teams to fill the remaining 2 spots.

I’m sure having a TV show was a big sell for sponsors. Sponsors, jerseys/apparel, and likeness revenue are the major funding of the EPL. TV revenue isn’t. Tickets are cheap compared to US sports. Front row season tickets at Liverpool is less than $1,000 (for 19 home games).

It’s a great watch. Wrexham is a historic club — their stadium is over a hundred years old (I believe it’s the oldest operating soccer stadium in the world). They were a once-great club who fell on hard times, got screwed over by bad owners, and were relegated all the way out of the football league into the “non-league” tier. When the show starts they are playing in the fifth tier of English soccer, the lowest possible professional level. The tiers below that are all semi-pro and amateur. They’d been stuck there for 13 years and the club is almost bankrupt. When the show starts all Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny are trying to do is to get them back into the football league. They didn’t have any aspirations other than that. And it really isn’t like they just came in and flashed a bunch of cash around (although, it absolutely did not hurt that they had a lot of money, obviously). You can have plenty of cash, but you can’t persuade a bunch of Premier League players to suddenly downgrade themselves into the non-league tiers.

The show is half about the club and half about the community surrounding the club. If you like any kind of team sports, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll like the show. Just be prepared for a metric fuck ton of hilarious British swearing.

Generational fan bases. We have that here especially in the NFL but not like everything shutting down or focusing on THE GAME.

Hey EarlG, thanks. Thanks for everything. ❤️
Looks like you’ve got the second shift today…..or is everyday a shift(?).

The language is very colorful, for sure.

Truth be told, one of the things that first attracted me to DU was the salty enthusiasm with which some DUers express themselves.

...each episode of the third season. One of the most heartwarming and inspiring stories ever. The townspeople absolutely adore their team. I fell for them, too. I even bought a Wrexham hoodie in support of the team.

Reynolds and McElhenny took this endeavor very seriously. No dilettantism here.

If you are a soccer/football fan and have not watched Welcome To Wrexham, please do. We found it enchanting.

The series also follows the women's team, which is just as beloved.

dilettantism
Dilettantism refers to the practice of shallow or superficial interest in a subject, often in the arts, without a deep commitment or professional level of skill. It can imply a lack of seriousness or a tendency to dabble in something without really perusing it.

Rob has a show on Apple called “Mythic Quest”. Conniving twisted games in a video game office. Very well written. They did two of the best TV sitcoms episodes I’ve ever seen - one done separately by actor during the heat of the pandemic and one about Nazis. “Sunny in Philadelphia” is crude but it’s also well written. It’s the longest running non-animated show in TV history for a reason.

Soccer is more interesting with a team to root for but all there really is for me is Phoenix Rising. I still like soccer or preferably MLS to MLB though. US women's team now that is a team to root for.