Welcome to Wrexham was magical TV. This spin-off sucks

Necaxa ★

Imagine taking the ingredients that made Welcome to Wrexham so magical, adding in a bucket of poo, and stirring. That’s Necaxa. I’ll be absolutely amazed if a more cynical piece of television emerges this year.

If Welcome to Wrexham is pure surprise and delight (and in its first two seasons especially, it was), Necaxa is the most nakedly beady-eyed attempt to capture that lightning-in-a-bottle magic, water it down, bulk it up with additives, and pawn it onto an unsuspecting market at double the price. In short, it sucks.

Writing about the first season of Welcome to Wrexham a few years back, I described it as “a gloriously well-rounded portrait of the relationship between a team and a town”, and noted that while it never would have been made without Rob McElhenney (as Rob Mac was then still known) and Ryan Reynolds, the club’s celebrity owners were “the least interesting thing” about it.

Sadly, the people behind Necaxa didn’t get the memo. They think Eva Longoria – a member of a US-based investment group that bought a 50 per cent stake in the Mexican soccer club in 2021 – is the most interesting thing.

There are other issues. As a transplant from Mexico City 22 years ago, the team they have chosen to follow simply does not have the emotional connection to the city in which it plays, Aguascalientes, in the same way Wrexham does. And as a fixture in the top flight Liga MX, it’s not a struggling club in any meaningful sense, no matter how much drama you might try to wring from its mid-table mediocrity.

Former Desperate Housewives star Longoria is given the nickname la Padrona (the boss) and positioned in the series as if she were the key figure in the narrative. But she’s not. We’re never told what stake she owns, but the consortium has many members (former Arsenal and Germany star Mesut Ozil among them), so it’s likely small. Just like the stakes.

When the show opens in 2024, Longoria confesses to having almost no knowledge of the game (despite having been a part owner for three years). She grew up with an NFL-loving father. Her connection to the team, the game, and the city feels like it’s being crafted on and for the camera, driven purely by the numbers (Mexican soccer has a huge TV audience in the US). It feels utterly inauthentic.

Some of those caveats could also have been levelled at Reynolds and Mac when they bought into Wrexham. But that was a non-league team dreaming of the big time, in a city of roughly 45,000 people, where the club was a focal point of community. They bought in for a pittance (circa £2 million), and by tapping into community hunger and connection, as well as a global TV audience, the club has been transformed. It’s a remarkable story.

Aguascalientes is a city of 1.2 million, most of whom are indifferent (as the series records) to the soccer club transplanted into its midst. There is no relegation from Liga MX, so the risk is low. Despite its humdrum status, Necaxa was valued at $US150 million when Longoria and co bought in. It is all so fundamentally different to the Wrexham equation.

Back in May, Ryan O’Hanlon of ESPN (which is owned by Disney) wrote about the Wrexham phenomenon. “When I asked Tim Keech, who founded MRKT Insights, a data consultancy that helps clubs make better decisions, what lessons Wrexham might hold for the larger soccer world, he put it plainly: ‘Virtually none’.”

What a pity the people at Disney didn’t come to the same conclusion before sanctioning this tepid knockoff.

Necaxa is now streaming on Disney+.

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