To the informal observer, Wrexham’s new third package for the 2025-26 season has a definite inflection of FIFA World Cup holders Argentina. With its sky-blue and white stripes, it would not look misplaced draped over the shoulders of Lionel Messi — and that’s for an excellent cause.
The Wrexham story has change into a world phenomenon because the Welsh membership have thundered again up by way of the English soccer league system since being taken over by Hollywood pair Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2021, to the purpose the place they’re only one step beneath the Premier League.
After buddying up and shopping for into non-league soccer regardless of admittedly realizing subsequent to nothing concerning the recreation, the actors-turned-investors first got here on board with the membership wallowing within the fifth-tier Nationwide League. Three promotions in three seasons adopted, and their meteoric and considerably unlikely transformation that has been documented all the best way by the favored FX/Disney+ documentary sequence, “Welcome to Wrexham.”
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Wrexham will embark on their first season within the English second tier for 43 years with momentum firmly behind the staff and the north Wales city they name residence. They’ve already revealed their residence and away kits for the event, produced by Italian producer Macron.
The house jersey is an excellent purple retro design with a centralized crest straight impressed by the shirt worn by the staff in the course of the 1981-82 season, the final time they performed within the second-tier equal to the modern-day Championship. The away package is impressed by the daffodil, Wales’ nationwide flower, and is dappled in sunshine yellow.
“We’re a novel membership and now we have a novel story. And for me, the kits are one of the simplest ways to inform the story of a soccer membership,” Wrexham CEO Michael Williamson instructed ESPN.
“We have been capable of develop three bespoke kits from scratch. It was round September final 12 months once we began having the dialog internally about having our kits [for the 2025-26 season] be one thing particular. I stated there’s an excellent probability we’ll be taking part in within the Championship, however extra importantly I need it to be one thing that represents our membership.”
And so, to finish the set of taking part in uniforms for subsequent season, Wrexham’s new third package is actually particular. The jersey bears the Albiceleste stripes made iconic within the soccer world by Messi and Diego Maradona earlier than him, however reconfigured as horizontal hoops just like these worn by Argentina’s nationwide rugby staff, generally known as the Pumas.
The jersey has a much more private and heartwarming origin story than your common package idea. It marks the a hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the primary Welsh settlers arriving within the Patagonia area of southern Argentina.
A small band of Welsh natives boarded a ship and left their homeland in 1865 (the 12 months after Wrexham AFC was initially based) so as to escape the English oppression that was prevalent within the nation on the time. These 153 settlers shaped Y Wladfa (“The Colony”) within the Chubut Valley and made it their mission to protect the Welsh language, traditions and tradition whereas growing the valley by way of trade and agriculture.
Regardless of durations of hardship within the unforgiving terrain, there are actually over 70,000 Welsh-Patagonians dwelling within the area. Many nonetheless fluently converse of their native tongue in what’s the largest (and presumably solely) Welsh-speaking group exterior Wales.
When requested how the thought of utilizing the third package to have fun the individuals of Y Wladfa took place, Williamson stated: “There’s this unimaginable story that we lined within the sequence that pays tribute to a gaggle of Welsh settlers exterior of Wales. In order a group, we determined to pay tribute to the Patagonia Reds and the Patagonian settlers.
“We began pondering ‘Properly, okay, that is fascinating. How can we do this?’ And so clearly a bit little bit of the colours of the Patagonia Reds and the Argentinian flag with the Welsh dragon performed into it, how we seize that into the package representing that connection and that bridge [between us].”
The design incorporates a sample of dragons throughout the blue stripes, a purple dragon on the again and the “Do not forget the place you got here from” — a line from the track which options within the titles of “Welcome to Wrexham” — contained in the shirt.
“There have been a few completely different choices [with all of the 2025-26 kits],” Williamson stated of the design course of. “We sat there with Rob and Ryan on their convention calls, who have been up at 2 a.m. their time. We have been actually going by way of: [put] these pipings right here, let’s change this right here, let’s invert that, let’s have one of these coloration with that kind of sample. In a few 24-hour span of hardcore, full-on design workshops, we got here out with three ideas that we that we actually favored.
“From that, we then despatched that to Rob and Ryan for his or her enter and their suggestions — and I can inform you that from previous experiences, they have an inclination to have some very proactive suggestions. In order that’s all the time a bit little bit of a problem. However the actuality is that they completely beloved the third package design.”
The promo produced to launch the package packs an enormous emotional punch. Two Welsh choirs — one standing on a cliff in Wales, the opposite on a rock face in Argentina — sing “Yma o Hyd” (“We’re nonetheless right here”) to one another throughout 7,500 miles of untamed Atlantic Ocean, earlier than all of them throw off their robes to disclose they’re sporting the identical shirt.
Though they dwell within the nation of Boca Juniors and River Plate, there are some ardent Wrexham followers among the many Patagonians. These supporters have been featured in an episode of “Welcome to Wrexham” and within the quick movie “ReUnited,” made along side Wrexham’s front-of-jersey sponsors United Airways, which detailed the membership’s efforts to stay related with their followers on the opposite aspect of the world. Regardless of not presently flying any routes into Wales, the service helped 5 Patagonian followers with Welsh ancestry make the pilgrimage from Argentina to Y Cae Ras — Wrexham’s residence floor — to set foot on the hallowed turf for the very first time on St. David’s Day.
“To have the ability to actually reunite a group that had not set foot in Wales earlier than, however had Welsh tradition and heritage and spoke Welsh and actually had a connection and a ardour for Wales — you possibly can’t ask for a greater partnership than that,” Williamson stated.
The shirt now comes imbued with the exact same spirit of resilience and perseverance embodied by these Welsh settlers who arrived within the huge expanse of Patagonia 160 years in the past and have labored so tirelessly to maintain the spirit of Wales alive there ever since.
ESPN senior editor Tony Mabert contributed to this report