“You Come Out Changed”: Ryan Reynolds Shares Dream Of Buying English Football Club In AppleTV+ Doc Series ‘Welcome To Wrexham’

While British celebrities have often parted with their money to fund their favourite football club, they at least have a passing knowledge of the off-side rule (you’ll have to look it up, sorry), but Reynolds is unusual in being an American A-lister to do the same, having parted with £2million ($2.36m) to buy British club Wrexham, with fellow actor Rob McElhenney.

Reynolds told The Times newspaper that, like a real-life Ted Lasso, he had to win over doubtful local fans, and the whole story is told in Welcome to Wrexham, a six-part documentary series about to debut on Disney+.

The film follows the Hollywood pair transforming the club’s stadium and securing TikTok as kit sponsor – plus the universal tale of every football fan’s emotional rollercoaster.

The Deadpool star told The Times: “The age-old tale of addiction is that you go into it with this casual approach and then you come out completely changed and ravaged. Football has done that to me. For better and for worse. I think they should make some sort of patch for it.”

Reynolds’ business partner McElhenney was inspired by watching a Netflix documentary on struggling northern English team Sunderland Till I Die.

Fans were initially sceptical, believing the mission of the enterprise was to make a documentary, rather than save their team, but were won over by the Hollywood pair, apparently, by the appointment of respected manager Phil Parkinson, in a scene shown in the doc.

Wrexham currently competes in the National League, which is the fifth tier of British football, but the owners are adamant they’re in the project for the long run and now have their eyes on the prize, which in British football talk only means one thing – the Premier League.

Welcome to Wrexham is on Disney+ from Aug 25