At first glance, it sounds like the story of an American couple who fried their brains watching the first series that happened to come their way on Disney+. In this case, Welcome to Wrexham, the entertainment documentary about the small Welsh club climbing the English football pyramid under its Hollywood ownership, led by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. No joke: after watching the show, two retired Texans sold everything and moved to Wrexham. They sold their house, sorted out their visas and decided to make the move in record time. The remarkable thing is that it turned out to be anything but a mad decision. The streaming infatuation was certainly real. The couple say they felt “a feeling that we had never even remotely experienced in the United States”, and over the past two and a half years they have travelled to Wales seven times. Between visits, they ordered some club merchandise and, in the process, began interacting with club staff and people from the town; if the first impressions were promising, after making the move across the Atlantic the two Americans told the BBC that Wrexham’s real strength, beyond its storybook rise through the football pyramid, “is the community. People here are genuinely friendly and welcoming, without any hint of elitism or snobbery.”
Something evidently far removed from the life they left behind in Texas, by now without regrets. “Wrexham is a working-class place. It has a great historical tradition, and the enthusiasm of its people made us feel at home straight away.” After the leap into the unknown, the couple settled in so quickly that they soon began throwing themselves into community life, volunteering with children’s homes and helping to preserve the town’s mining heritage. The next difficult step, already announced, will be learning Welsh. And as for Wrexham, the team’s fortunes — after coming close to the Championship play-offs in the season just ended — have by now become the least of their concerns. Win or lose, the docuseries has found two new protagonists.