AILSA CHANG, HOST:

OK. Forget being the face of a hit Marvel movie franchise, and forget starring in the longest-running live-action sitcom in U.S. history.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

For Ryan Reynolds of "Deadpool" fame and Rob McElhenney from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," it is now the story of a Welsh soccer team that has them on what they call the ride of their lives.

CHANG: That's right. The actors bought the Wrexham Association Football Club in 2021. Wrexham wasn't that popular. They had a dismal record for a long time which kept them locked out of top-tier English leagues. But last season, they won enough games to earn a promotion to get back into the English Football League for the first time in 15 years.

KELLY: Yeah. And then over the weekend, a win, coupled with losses by other teams clinched another promotion for Wrexham to League One - that is just two steps below the prestigious Premier League. It is the team's first ever back-to-back promotion.

CHANG: So it's a big deal with big "Ted Lasso" vibes, right?

KELLY: Right. Reynolds congratulated the team on X, formerly known as Twitter. He suggested his co-owner always believed in belief. He wrote, quote, "a few years ago, if you had told me I would be crying tears of joy over a football match taking place in North Wales, you would be Rob McElhenney." Well, congrats to them and to Wrexham.

(SOUNDBITE OF DECLAN SWANS SONG, "ALWAYS SUNNY IN WREXHAM") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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