As the sizzling sun cooks you from above, the growing chorus of a thousand synchronized voices feels like a fever dream.
The cadence. The five-clap punctuation. The template is familiar to fans across America: a “Let’s go--” chant is taking hold.
But it’s the “Wrexham!” part that’s so uncanny.
Because suddenly it hits you that you’re watching sun-kissed Californians cheer on an EFL League One side from 6,000 miles away. That 13,322 fans have filled Harder Stadium on the UCSB campus for a Wrexham vs Bournemouth preseason friendly. And that there might be more to the Welsh side branding this their ‘Wrex Coast tour’ than just phonetic wordplay.
Maybe Southern California has adopted Wrexham as their own?
Maybe Wrexham has outgrown Wales?
Three years ago, hardly anyone in America knew of Wrexham. Now, they’re (rightfully) billed as the home team in a game on the Santa Barbara coast. Chants from the Racecourse Ground have been supplanted. Lager has given way to La Croix. Mince pies to pupusas.
When Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought Wrexham AFC, even they couldn’t have predicted this kind of cultural impact. But milling around the stadium, it’s hard not to wonder whether soccer is informing the spectacle or if Welcome To Wrexham has flipped that dynamic on its head?
While Deadpool and Always Sunny shirts sprinkle the stands, the VIP end feels as though you’ve stumbled into a garden party. The green grass. The white tents. The azure skies. Talking to women in wide-brimmed, designer hats and men in beige, j-crew linens, a voice in the back of your head keeps saying “the f---ing Catalina Wine Mixer.”
But alas, there’s no Will Ferrell (that’s another California soccer story). Just a plethora of other celebrities. A who’s who of navel-gazing glitterati feigning enthusiasm for soccer while the rest of us secretly wonder if we’re here for something else entirely?
When the announcer-cum-hype-man takes to the intercom shortly before kickoff, we get our answer: “A lot of big personalities in the crowd!” he proclaims. The crowd responds with perhaps the biggest pop of the day.
These are as much fans of spectacle as they are soccer.
But does that matter?
Maybe lingering under the surface of this sun-drenched phenomenon is the unsettling notion that being a soccer fan is fundamentally no different than being the fan of a TV show?
After all, fandom is personal and often illogical. So what if it doesn’t make sense to the ‘proper football’ snob? It doesn’t have to. Being swept up in the moment is the privilege of every supporter, no matter how uninitiated.
And despite a stop-start first half interspersed with clumsy challenges (some soft, some not so much) and unfortunate injuries (especially for Bournemouth’s Owen Bevan), the oohs and aahs at Wrexham’s missed chances were pronounced while the own goal that gave them the lead just before halftime was met with even louder cheers.
The fact is, thousands turned up to watch a lower-division, Welsh football team... in California. It’s a sight so surreal there can only be one explanation: Hollywood.
In their short tenure, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have taken a club unknown outside of the UK and turned them into a global brand. From a business perspective, it has arguably been the most impressive ownership takeover in soccer history. And in doing so, they’ve shown the sporting elites what Hollywood has known for years: story is king.
What they realized (and subsequently exploited) is the narrative potential of soccer. With relegation the stakes are higher. With promotion, upsets bigger. The rise and fall of clubs, players, and entire communities has long been a major element of soccer’s appeal. And in Wrexham, they found a club that ticked all the boxes.
This was a rough-n-tumble team from a down-n-out town, desperate for a little hope (something Welcome To Wrexham makes clear the owners are very conscious of). In come a couple of angels, saving the club from squalor and propelling a small, working class city to new heights. It’s quintessential binge-worthy ‘content’. You can smell the popcorn.
But what really sets McElhenney and Reynold’s model apart - what has been their stroke of genius - is putting the story ahead of the soccer.
In doing so, Welcome To Wrexham has allowed them to exploit their own, self-generated popularity paradox. Rather than the assumed sports dichotomy of attention following success, they’re using attention to achieve success.
When speaking to veteran striker Steven Fletcher, a journeyman whose career has taken him from the Premier League to Europe and now to Wrexham, the effect is undeniable. “I would compare it [the attention] to the Premier League clubs” he says. “You see it here. . . . They’re not just here to watch Bournemouth or the Premier League team, they’re here to watch us.”
But while this approach has helped propel the former non-league side up the food chain, has it been good for soccer?
In blazing a new trail, Welcome To Wrexham has inadvertently carved out a world unto itself. An alternate reality where Paul Mullin is talked about in the same breath as Lionel Messi and the Racecourse Ground is more hallowed than the San Siro.
In a world of influencers, nepotism, and pay-offs, sports remain one of the last vestiges of meritocracy. Yet speaking to Wrexham fans at Harder Stadium, few remember that they didn’t win their league last season and not one (at least that I spoke to) remembers who did (Stockport).
Indeed, what Wrexham is proving is that even in sports success can supersede results.
But there’s two sides to every story. And in this instance, that other side is AFC Bournemouth.
Forced into administration and on the brink of being kicked out of the Football League in 2008, Bournemouth hired 31 year old former player, Eddie Howe, as the youngest manager in league history. Then, in what became known as “The Great Escape”, Howe saved the team from relegation, reversing the club’s fortunes. Over the next decade, he led Bournemouth up the English football pyramid, gaining promotion to the Premier League in 2015.
Now, under in-demand manger, Andoni Iraola, the club are coming off their best points finish in Premier League history. On top of that, they count USMNT player Tyler Adams in their squad (currently injured) and Michael B. Jordan as their own celebrity shareholder. (His newly designed MBJ X kits, it is worth noting, were proudly worn both on the pitch and in the VIP area - where he too mingled.)
All of this to say that Bournemouth are a Cinderella story with arguably even more series-worthy drama than Wrexham (just as their second half equalizer was more deserving than Wrexham’s first half counterpart.)
And yet, the majority of reporting on this game - and any involving Wrexham - is framed by the same theme: Rob & Ryan. The fairy tale. The TV show. Even in writing this, I too am feeding the popularity paradox.
But do other clubs want that kind of popularity?
When I questioned Bournemouth forward Antoine Semenyo about the idea of a Cherries series, he said “That’d be sick. I’d really enjoy that.” But he was also quick to point out that while it would be “nice to have a documentary about your team” he’s “not really focused on that.” Nor are many fans.
Just this month, Scottish side Motherwell rejected a bid from former Netflix VP Erik Barmack and his wife, Courtney. While they lack the celebrity cachet of other owners, it was nonetheless determined by the supporter-led club that “investment at any cost” simply wasn’t a line they were willing to cross.
So what is the cost?
Professional soccer has always been a commodity. Selling tickets, merchandise, and players isn’t selling out, it’s business. And famous owners fill the boardrooms of some of the game’s most niche clubs, from Eva Longoria and Kate Upton at Necaxa (recently joined by, who else? Rob & Ryan) to Tom Brady at Birmingham City.
Yet what’s changed over recent years - what Motherwell fans seem to be canny to - is that there’s more at stake than the tangible.
From sportswashing to league games being shipped overseas, the trajectory of soccer commodification (in both America and abroad) is sterilizing the intangible qualities that make any given club unique.
The culture. The identity. The songs sung in the stands.
The thing with capturing lightening in a bottle is that once you start distributing it en masse, it loses its spark. And affluent Americans - willing to splash out a hundred bucks on a friendly to watch a team some of them have no connection with beyond an FX docuseries - feel more like a symptom than a cure.
And so, after the final whistle blows to a 1-1 draw, the question left hanging in the hot Santa Barbara air is this: is Welcome to Wrexham bigger than Wrexham AFC themselves?
Watching Wayne Jones - Wrexham pub owner and series regular - be swarmed by fans, it certainly seems that way. At what point does someone like him look around and think... Let’s go Wrexham?
When fans start referring to league seasons by their Hulu drop-down menu? When their trophy cabinet fills with Emmy’s? Maybe when he’s offered his own spin-off? Maybe never.
Ultimately, only their fans can say. And as entertaining and inviting as Welcome To Wrexham might be, I haven’t joined the club.
Many, however, have. And as they continue to, the culture and identity of Wrexham will inevitably change to reflect their motivations.
As streams of spectators begin spilling out at the 80th minute, I overhear a fellow journalist in the press box say “They came for the spectacle, not the result.” Perhaps that change was already underway.
Or perhaps it’s unfair to read too much into what Wrexham Manager, Phil Parkinson, described as “all in all, a really good workout.”
Or perhaps the heat has just gotten the better of me.
How or when the Wrexham story ends, no one knows. But no show goes on forever. And reruns aren’t the same as memories.
With the success of the team now irrevocably tied to the success of the series, the stakes might be higher than even the people of North Wales would like.
Because with each “Let’s Go Wrexham!” chant that drifts off over the Pacific, ethereal fragments of their identity go with it, disappearing beyond crashing waves of change, while the setting sun dips below the horizon of Wrexham’s new home: Hollywood.