Wrexham vs Real Madrid in the Champions League: Why Ryan Reynolds & Rob McElhenney ‘believe in miracles’ & will always cling to Premier League promotion dream

Since completing a stunning takeover in 2021, Hollywood co-owners at SToK Racecourse have overseen a meteoric rise. Remarkable progress has been made on and off the field, with every twist and turn in that journey being caught on camera for the ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ documentary series.

The plan is to deliver many more episodes of that production as the Red Dragons set the most ambitious of targets. Reynolds and McElhenney have never shied away from the fact that they want to see Wrexham competing in the top tier of English football.

Quizzed on whether that dream will become reality over the course of the next decade, Reynolds told the Men In Blazers podcast: “Ten years from now, we would be morons to not want to see this club in the Premier League. But also be unique in that everything about the place has stayed true to what it originally was. That’s the perfect scenario.

“It should be a wild adventure. If it was all predictable and we knew exactly what was going to happen, this would be miserable. You can’t understand happiness and joy and elation unless you understand what it feels like to fail and be miserable. Thankfully this sport offers all of those emotions inside each and every f*cking minute of a match. You get to go on that ride.

“Ten years? I hope Wrexham is Wrexham and I hope that the change that is taking place is for the better and that people are proud of it and that the change doesn’t feel like it was too big, too soon.

“There is an underdog nature to the town and Rob and I always think that you can hate me and Rob, or not root for us, but I find it’s very hard not to root for that community and that place. When we first got there, there was a lot of ‘why Wrexham?’ and you don’t hear that any more. That’s probably the thing I’m most proud of.”

Pressed further on whether North Wales could be playing host to European giants such as Real Madrid at some stage in the not too distant future, Reynolds added: “Can you imagine! Could you imagine that feeling! That’s why it will always be special, because you can – on some level – go ‘well, we’re in League One, we’ve gone up twice already, and I believe in miracles’.

“Rob really pushed that moral on me because I happen to have that kinship to the Brits in the sense that we look at things through a lens that is sometimes a little dire. I tend to undersell things.

“I remember Rob early on was like ‘of course we want to go to the Premier League’. It eventually got into my cells and I was like ‘hell yeah we want that’. Why wouldn’t we want that? Who wouldn’t want that? And we can kind of see it.”

Wrexham have already seen one potential route into Europe discussed, through the Welsh League Cup, while Phil Parkinson has his squad pushing for a historic third successive promotion in 2024-25 – with the Red Dragons sat third in League One ahead of a crunch clash with ‘Hollywood Derby’ rivals Birmingham.