A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
When two actors - Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney - took over a struggling Welsh soccer club five years ago, they had some big dreams. They spoke to reporters about the Wrexham football club one day playing in England's top league in this clip from the club's YouTube page.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "PRESS CONFERENCE
ROB MCELHENNEY AND RYAN REYNOLDS IN FULL AT WREXHAM AFC")
ROB MCELHENNEY: You realize you started by saying, we're going to take Wrexham to the Premier League, and they all recorded it.
RYAN REYNOLDS: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
MCELHENNEY: OK. So that's what they're going to leave with.
REYNOLDS: That is the goal, isn't it?
MCELHENNEY: Yeah. I love it. Yes.
REYNOLDS: I'm not saying it's this year. Obviously, that's impossible.
MCELHENNEY: By the way...
MARTÍNEZ: Now Wrexham has earned a promotion to the second-tier Championship League, putting it one step away from that dream. It's a big step. And here to talk about it is soccer commentator Roger Bennett. So Roger, we heard a lot of laughter in that clip. When these actors bought Wrexham, was anyone at all predicting this?
ROGER BENNETT: Well, sports is at its best when it transcends sports, and that's really what we've seen with these guys. This area is a postindustrial North Welsh former mining town. This is not where happiness occurs. This is not where hope takes root. And watching Wrexham - just football's tiniest micro-macro power - slay all comers and move up, a little bit like a baseball team going from the rookie league in the fifth tier all the way to triple-A, one level below...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
BENNETT: ...The big dance, it's been like watching "Cool Runnings," in which the Jamaican bobsleigh team end up winning Olympic gold, albeit in a sled sponsored by two Hollywood superstars.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter) Now, speaking of one of those stars - Ryan Reynolds - you interviewed him once. And he said, I don't know anything about running a football club, and that is my strength. So how did they make this work? Is - the fact that he didn't know anything help him?
BENNETT: Yeah, I mean, knowing what you don't know in life is one of the great keys to success. And it's not just knowing what they don't know. Watching Ryan Reynolds, watching Rob McElhenney descend - I mean, it's surreal. Hollywood superstars going into a North Welsh postindustrial mining town. I mean, it's hard to describe the power of the achievement. I grew up a stone's throw from Wrexham. And what they've done is transform a region economically that was doomed, left for dead - cast the world spotlight on it.
And really, A, it's the way they've approached the task with a real humility. They've learnt about the club and the fan base. They've always put that first in the television show that they've welded onto the side of the club so that the world has fallen in love with this cast of characters - "Welcome To Wrexham." And watching them put it first - we've had them on our show a lot. The thousands of decisions that they've had to make to make this hero's journey is like watching Virgil or Homer lived out in a Welsh town.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
BENNETT: Watching them in that moment when they got promoted, it was like watching two kids, two true fans. All the Hollywood pretense fell away. And that's really the magnificence of the story - the humanity.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. So about 40 seconds left here. What kind of competition will they face in the Championship League? What's it going to take to get them promoted again?
BENNETT: So Wrexham, thus far, have been like a cuddly bunch of unicorns and Care Bears. The Championship is an unforgiving knife fight in which money wins out. It's kind of fought in the prison yard with homemade shivs. So it'll be a lot less cuddly. There'll be a whole new level of characters coming into play for them, a whole new set of "Star Wars"-cantina-worthy human beings welding themselves to the Wrexham story. I wouldn't bet against them, A. Honestly, I can imagine a time in which the great Real Madrid are working out where they can park the bus at Wrexham for a Champions League game.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. That is quite the prediction. That's Roger Bennett, founder and CEO of the Men in Blazers Media Network. Roger, thanks.
BENNETT: Courage, A.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WREXHAM IS THE NAME")
RATARSED: (Singing) And Wrexham is the name. We have made the mighty... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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