Culture
Birmingham City vs Wrexham: The EFL celebrity derby and a battle for U.S. fandom
The phrase ‘Monday Night Football’ may be no stranger to heavyweight clashes but an all-time NFL great taking on Deadpool has to be a first.
This is Tom Brady tackling Ryan Reynolds, League One’s big spenders going head-to-head with Hollywood FC — or simply, Birmingham City versus Wrexham.
No matter how we dress up a fixture recently described on X by Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney as “an absolute banger”, Monday night’s showdown is a big deal on and off the pitch. Two clubs who are the very embodiment of globalised football will meet in a sellout clash that is being broadcast live on both sides of the Atlantic.
“A really, really high-profile match,” says CBS Sports executive vice president Dan Weinberg before Birmingham host Wrexham, which will be shown on two channels as part of the network’s four-year deal with the English Football League (EFL).
“We’ve carried every Wrexham game this season and we’ll continue to lean into them as much as we can. They are impossible to ignore in this country with the celebrity influence they have and the visibility of Ryan and Rob. We are enthused by the growth of their profile in the market.
“These two clubs have owners that resonate very well in this country.”
Not so long ago, few would have batted an eyelid in the United Kingdom over this particular Anglo-Welsh contest, never mind in the United States. The two clubs have very little shared history, other than the £1million City paid for Bryan Hughes in 1997 that remains Wrexham’s record transfer fee.
Now, though, the power of celebrity — plus back-to-back promotions for Wrexham and last May’s shock relegation for Birmingham — means this League One fixture carries plenty of intrigue.
Deadpool star Reynolds and McElhenney, through the success of the Emmy-award-winning Welcome to Wrexham documentary, have turned a previously provincial club into a global sensation with two successful pre-season tours of North America under their belts.
Birmingham are no less fascinating thanks to the 2023 takeover by Knighthead, the U.S. investment firm fronted by co-owner Tom Wagner and supported by minority investor Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion.
Relegation at the end of their first season was certainly not part of the script but it has done nothing to dim the group’s huge ambitions, which include building a new stadium after buying a 60-acre plot of land around a mile from St Andrew’s.
Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady became a minority owner at Birmingham in 2023 (Beatriz Velasco/Getty Images)
City clearly don’t intend on hanging around for long in the third tier, judging from the £20million ($26m) they splashed on transfers this summer. Around half of that is understood to have gone on wrestling striker Jay Stansfield from Fulham’s grasp, with Birmingham paying between £12m and £15m before add-ons.
To put that figure into context, the previous record paid by a club in this division before the recent window was the £4million Sunderland paid for Wigan Athletic striker Will Grigg.
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Wrexham co-owner McElhenney will no doubt recall that particular signing due to it featuring heavily in series two of Sunderland ‘Til I Die, the Netflix show that first gave the comedy actor the idea of buying a football club.
His team have been no slouches with recruitment, either. The £2million spent during the summer window was an unprecedented outlay for Wrexham, made possible by last season’s annual revenue smashing through the £20million barrier. Blue-chip sponsors, such as United Airlines, contributed heavily to that club-record figure.
Both camps have been entering into the spirit during the build-up to Monday’s eagerly-anticipated encounter, with Wrexham enlisting the help of Eli Manning, a long-time NFL rival of Brady.
In response to Manning donning the Welsh club’s team shirt, Brady took to X and Instagram — where his combined following stands at 18 million — with a cheeky video featuring one of his prized Super Bowl trophies that ends with an appeal to McElhenney to “educate the Wrexham fans just a little bit on the history of the NFL?”
See you Monday! @BCFC @Wrexham_AFC @RMcElhenney @VancityReynolds https://t.co/Ny87RekOPR pic.twitter.com/YyvkWmL5JK
— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) September 14, 2024
AJ Swoboda, managing director of sports intelligence firm Twenty First Group, believes Wrexham are a prime example of how to tap into the U.S. market over the longer term.
“High-profile figures like Tom Brady or Ryan Reynolds will always help bring clubs into the spotlight,” he says. “Especially in crowded or foreign markets like the U.S.
“But, while celebrity owners generate a short-term buzz, long-term fan engagement requires sustained sporting success and smart marketing — largely digital — strategies.
“The Welcome to Wrexham docuseries has been key to growing Wrexham’s global fanbase but the club’s owners have then backed up these efforts through material sporting performance improvements.”
He cites how an analysis of Google Trends data over the last year shows Wrexham had 22 times the interest in the U.S. compared to Birmingham and 1.4 times that of Premier League neighbours Aston Villa, even though the latter have qualified for the Champions League.
“Tom Brady’s appeal and status should continue creating interest for Birmingham City in new markets,” adds Swoboda. “But, as with Wrexham, this attention needs to be converted into deeper fan engagement. Celebrity minority ownership is not as unique as it used to be.”
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds became Wrexham’s owners in 2020 (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)
As Wrexham co-owner McElhenney made clear when tagging Brady on X, Monday night’s clash under the St Andrew’s floodlights has all the ingredients to be a cracker — but, perhaps their biggest battle lies ahead.
In a recent report titled Connecting and Winning U.S. Fandoms: A Guidebook For European Clubs, fan data specialists CLV Group suggest that 36million U.S.-based soccer fans — or 44 per cent — are still undecided on which team to support. The group’s CEO Neil Joyce estimates a potential $1.1billion is up for grabs.
The big Premier League clubs or members of the European elite, such as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, are expected to hoover up a sizeable chunk of this bounty, but Joyce also believes clubs with high-profile celebrity owners, such as Wrexham and Birmingham, can earn a piece of the action.
“Wrexham’s story is phenomenal,” he says. “It has the underdog element, a club on the brink of extinction that starts to work its way back up. Americans love that kind of storytelling.
“Then, there’s the measurability of it all. United Airlines, one of the biggest airlines in the world, is on the jerseys. That kind of link makes a huge difference. I was on a flight with United earlier in the summer and they were handing out the (free amenity) bag with the Wrexham (pyjamas).
“It isn’t about just the match. It is the personalities around it. Look at how Taylor Swift has brought new fandom to the NFL (her partner Travis Kelce plays for the Kansas City Chiefs) in the same way Ryan Reynolds has brought Deadpool fans to Wrexham.
“Given the new EFL rights deal (with CBS), there will be a lot more exposure to Wrexham for sports fans in the U.S. They can tap into that. Same for Birmingham, with arguably the NFL’s greatest of all time.
“Look at Tom Brady’s adjacent sports investments. He has the (NFL team) Las Vegas Raiders, he has a WNBA team (Las Vegas Aces). Again, I’d be tapping into those fanbases and bringing them on the journey with Birmingham as well.”
As Joyce points out, central to making any potential inroads into the U.S. sports market is CBS Sports becoming the new home of the EFL. With 250-plus matches being shown live across the network per season for at least the next four years, the potential exposure is huge.
CBS does not reveal publicly viewing figures for individual matches but executive vice president Weinberg says he has been “really, really happy with the viewership in the first month”.
He believes a key factor in America’s increasing EFL curiosity is the promotion and relegation setup that sees clubs potentially move up and down the pyramid, such as how Birmingham dropped into League One last May and are now determined to bounce straight back up.
“The U.S. market has wrapped their arms around that,” says Weinberg, who is at pains to stress that showcasing all 72 EFL teams is important to the network. “It’s compelling and dramatic.”
Birmingham’s bid to win promotion straight back to the Championship is their season’s major plotline (Cameron Smith/Getty Images)
Recent years have seen a flurry of U.S. investors getting involved in the EFL. By last Christmas, 22 of the 72 teams were either wholly owned by or had minority investors from across the Atlantic. Fourteen of those had accepted new investment since Wrexham’s takeover in 2021.
“What Wrexham have done brilliantly is globalisation and diversification,” says Laurie Pinto, a specialist in football financing and club acquisitions. “That’s easier said than done. (Wrexham director) Shaun Harvey and others should get a lot of credit for that.
“There’s lots of people who think they can do the same. That’s the challenge: trying to make a global push with partners outside the UK to diversify the income stream.”
Asked if he felt future years will bring even more investment from North America, Pinto replies: “Yes, there is a lot more interest. Most of these American owners think global and they put money in.
“U.S. sport is expensive — if you want to buy a basketball, NFL or baseball team, we are talking in the billions.”
With the U.S. hosting the 2026 World Cup alongside Canada and Mexico, sports media analyst Larry Johnson believes the new four-year TV deal means EFL clubs are in a prime position to benefit.
“Viewership data from the last couple of World Cups shows a rise in popularity (in the U.S.) for sports in Europe,” he says. “They did quite a bit for La Liga and the Premier League, even a bit for the Bundesliga.
“All the arrows point towards the next World Cup pushing up the numbers on the Premier League and EFL. Wrexham have an opportunity here, especially if they get promoted this year, to really do something special.
“Wrexham are already drawing numbers. They had a friendly with Chelsea (in July 2023) on ESPN, one of the largest cable networks. It pulled 300,000 viewers. That’s comparable with a Major League Soccer game on the same network.”
As is perhaps inevitable in an age when regular-season games in the NFL and Major League Baseball are played in London, there has been talk of the Premier League or EFL possibly doing similar by switching one-off fixtures to the States.
Such a move would be hugely controversial. When the Daily Mail suggested this summer that Birmingham and Wrexham were in talks over a possible switch, Canada-born Reynolds was very quick to vehemently deny the story.
Wrexham’s international profile has led to high-profile friendlies against Premier League giants Chelsea (Lyndsay Radnedge/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
Nevertheless, such talk remains, with CLV Group’s Joyce believing it could help a European competition steal a march in attracting fans.
He says: “The monetary gain and attempts to capture the market would be a lot easier if European clubs played competitive games in the U.S. There is more than $1billion on the table.”
Such talk about growing audiences and realising potential is, of course, for the boardoom. On the pitch, all that will matter come Monday evening are the three points.
Dan Scarr joined Wrexham in the summer from Plymouth Argyle, where he won the League One title in 2023. He is a lifelong Birmingham fan who spent three years on the playing staff at St Andrew’s after arriving late in the professional game at 22.
“What’s been going on there is crazy,” the defender tells The Athletic. “Good for the city and, being a Birmingham City fan, it is great for them. The atmosphere will be electric and it’s a sellout. There’s also the bragging rights between the owners, both being American and stuff like that.
“But we want to stop that (title-winning) parade. Everything else doesn’t matter.”
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(Top photos: Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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