Part soccer team, part streaming juggernaut, Ryan Reynolds’ team finally visits his hometown for an exhibition game Saturday.
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The Whitecaps might be Vancouver’s soccer team. But Wrexham AFC is North America’s soccer team.
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The FX-documentary powered Welsh side has become the darling of North American soccer, injected into the mainstream consciousness through the twin vaccinations of Hollywood’s Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. The documentary, Welcome to Wrexham, has garnered the team legions of global fans around the world, even if they play two levels below the usual clubs — the Liverpools and Manchester Citys et al — North Americans would know.
Even excluding their documentary viewership, they have more viewers than many MLS teams, despite few of their fixtures being televised here.
The Red Dragons play the final game of their Wrex Coast Tour on Saturday at B.C. Place against the Whitecaps a week after taking Premier League giants Chelsea to the brink in a 2-2 draw in San Francisco.
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More than 30,000 fans watched that game at the home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, with most cheering for the Welsh side. Saturday’s exhibition game in Vancouver has already sold more than 30,000 tickets as well.
“We were here (in North American) last year too, and I think that was kind of an eye opener for all of us,” said Wrexham centreback Eoghan O’Connell.
“I remember going out for warm-up in the first game in North Carolina and thinking ‘this is incredible.’ The level of support is incredible. We walk on the street, even in Los Angeles, and you get people shouting across the road at you. It’s just brilliant to be a part of.”
“It’s different for a team at our level to have this kind of tour, with the crowds and play in the stadiums we’ve been in,” said coach Phil Parkinson. “And I always stress to the lads about just really embracing it and enjoying every minute of it because it doesn’t come along very often.”
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The excitement — or at least curiosity — extended to the members of the Whitecaps. The idea of doing their own behind-the-scenes documentary intrigued them, though it would surely need the involvement of their own celebrity owner, Steve Nash.
“I would love the Whitecaps (to do) a similar thing,” said Caps coach Vanni Sartini.
“You guys know I want to be always in front of the camera,” he laughed.
“The game is important so I picked a very nice outfit. I was like it was a toss up. It was dress like this (silk shirt and blazer) or dress like Deadpool today.”
Deadpool himself — the fair-haired Reynolds — is expected to take a break from his relentless promotion of the new Deadpool movie to attend the game.
Wrexham plays in League One, climbing the tiers of English soccer with two straight seasons of promotion. They’ve tied two Premier League teams on their U.S. pre-season tour this year — AFC Bournemouth was the other, 1-1 — but Sartini wasn’t sure how they compare to a midseason MLS team.
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“I’m very curious to see tomorrow how our players match up with a League One team … that probably is a fake League One team,” he said. “It’s almost a Championship team because they will probably win the league and be there (in the second tier). So I really look forward for tomorrow.”
After the tie last week, Parkinson said Wrexham was unlucky not to have won.
“You’ve got to put it into context. We’ve played a billion-pound team, they’ve spent so much money, and two years ago we were playing in the National League,” he said. “To go toe-to-toe with Chelsea tonight, you can understand what an effort that was from the lads and we could and should have won the game.”
The other star of the show Saturday is the freshly installed grass pitch, which will last until after the game, when all the sod trucked in from Washington state last week will be ripped out.
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It’s a trial run for the 2026 World Cup of sorts, as grass pitches are mandatory for the tournament, though similar setups were blasted by players in the Copa America tournament in the U.S. last month.
“It’s beautiful to see the stadium with the grass — the real grass,” said Sartini. “I saw it this morning when I came. It’s like Champions League level. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”
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