Once upon a time, I was playing in a rec league soccer game on a Thursday night in Los Angeles. It was a seven-a-side league, and most teams tended to play with a single midfielder. That's where I played for our team, and the midfielder for the other team was quite good. This was not a high-quality league; it wasn't filled with other former collegiate players and although I am washed up, I could still pretty easily push forward with the ball and then recover back in plenty of time. I never had to worry about what the other team's midfielder was doing.
This guy, though, had some juice on the ball and was dangerous in space, so I spent more of the game than normal hanging deeper and making sure he couldn't pick up a full head of steam. The halftime whistle blew; we were up by two of three goals. As I was walking toward the sideline, he tapped me on the shoulder, dapped me up, and said, "Good game, man."
"Game's not over," I said. "It's halftime."
"I'm out," he replied. "'Deadpool' premiere, bro."
He left; I don't think he had a bag or a wallet or car keys or a water bottle or sneakers; he walked directly off the field after talking to me. I never saw him again. We won the game, but, well ... I guess he won the war?
Eight years later, I'm here, writing a piece about the Welsh soccer team owned by the star of "Deadpool," Ryan Reynolds, who could only afford to buy the soccer team because people cared so much about Deadpool that they'd leave a soccer game at halftime to go watch him do whatever it is Deadpool does. We're getting meta here, but what is the Wrexham experience if not that?
Is Wrexham still the 150-plus-year-old local Welsh club that it was five or 10 years ago? Does it serve the same purpose? Or is its new purpose to provide drama for the FX reality television series, "Welcome to Wrexham"? The two, at least, don't seem like they can exist without each other.
But rather than digging too much deeper into the metaphysics of it all, I want to treat Wrexham in a different way: as a soccer team that's trying to win more soccer games. Reynolds says they want to make it to the Premier League one day. Could it actually happen?