If Peter Moore requires further proof as to just how far Wrexham have come in their five and a half years under Hollywood ownership, the former Liverpool chief executive will be given it in the coming weeks.
After heading to Wisla Krakow, the Polish top-flight club where Moore holds a minority shareholding, for a friendly this weekend with around 1,500 of their fans in tow, Wrexham will face Premier League opposition in Helsinki, Tampa, New York City and Philadelphia.
It is a far cry from the now 71-year-old’s days living in north Wales as a youngster in the 1970s when Wrexham pre-seasons largely consisted of trips to the nearby towns of Bangor or Aberystwyth, plus the odd sortie across the English border.
Likewise a little under six years ago, when Moore first became involved in what has since become one of sport’s more unexpected success stories as an early sounding board for Rob Mac in his plan to buy a British sports club and then film a documentary series about them after being inspired by watching Sunderland ‘Til I Die on Netflix.
“I was introduced to Rob by Steve Horowitz,” says Moore, referring to the Inner Circle Sports partner who has been instrumental in a number of major sports takeovers, including the purchase of Liverpool by the Fenway Sports Group in 2010.
“Steve asked me to meet Rob, who lived in Los Angeles but wanted to make the two-hour drive up to me (in Santa Barbara) for a chat. Within a few days, he’s knocking on my door. Rob is like that.”
Mac’s determination not to waste time was understandable. Here was an opportunity to tap into an extensive business knowledge, built up over 35 years in which Moore had worked in senior roles for gaming giants Sega, Microsoft and EA Sports, and sportswear firms Patrick and Reebok.
Crucially, in terms of Mac’s plan to buy Wrexham in partnership with fellow actor Ryan Reynolds, Moore had spent three years from 2017 as chief executive at Liverpool, during which he had overseen the club’s first title of the Premier League era, a Champions League final win and another trophy in the old, annual version of the Club World Cup to go with record-breaking revenues off the field.
“I’d just moved back from Liverpool and just bought this house,” says Moore, who has lived most of his adult life in the United States and remains an advisor to the Wrexham hierarchy.
“We had a great chat. I told him the club was amazing, the community, the town. Rob explained to me about watching Sunderland ‘Til I Die. He’d never met Ryan at that stage (the pair having famously ‘met’ initially over social media).
“The idea was he wanted to drag me back to Wrexham, in the nicest way. My Californian wife is in the background, going, ‘No, no, no!’ We have six kids between us, all American. All adults now.
“We’d just bought this house. It was the middle of Covid. So, it wasn’t for us. But I said I was more than willing to do what I could to help. I’d advise, I’d get involved.”
Peter Moore with Mohamed Salah on the day Liverpool signed the forward in 2017 (Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Moore was as good as his word.
Validation of the two actors’ intentions was required, especially in Wrexham, where, amid the excitement, there was an understandable scepticism best articulated by the question, “But why us?”
Via a series of interviews ranging from the BBC and the Financial Times to the local Wrexham Leader newspaper, Moore moved to allay those fears and doubts. Through his contacts at EA Sports, he set in motion the process that led to Wrexham being featured in FIFA 22, unprecedented for a then fifth-tier, non-League club and huge in terms of spreading their name internationally.
“My job was to kind of evaluate them,” says Moore, a lifelong Liverpool fan whose family moved from that city to neighbouring north Wales when he was 10 years old. “The more I talked to both of them, the more I could tell they were genuine. They wanted to do good. They were going to go in with both feet, and had the vision and the global reach to get this going.
“My job was to figure out how I, as a Wrexham lad who had been gone 40-odd years, could explain this to people. How their hearts were in the right place and they had the wallets to make a difference, plus the vision and strategy to be there a long time.
“Of course, they then started talking about the fr**ging Premier League when Wrexham were still in the National League! I’m thinking, ‘Easy now’. But look how close they are today (one promotion away from the top flight).”
Wisla Krakow boast an impressive array of honours, including 13 league titles and five Polish Cups. Wrexham, in contrast, have never played top-division football, last season’s seventh place in the second-tier Championship being the highest finish in their history.
But there is one parallel between the two clubs and that’s how both were rescued from financial oblivion by their fans.
In Wrexham’s case, this included £100,000 being raised in just 24 hours to prevent the club being kicked out of the Conference, as the fifth level of English football’s pyramid was then known, paving the way, eventually, for the Supporters’ Trust to take charge for a decade.
Similarly, Wisla only survived in 2019 thanks to a crowdfunding campaign, believed to be the biggest in Europe, as fans raised around £850,000 ($1.1milllion at the current rate) to save them from bankruptcy.
Under majority shareholder Jaroslaw Krolewski, who invited Moore to become an advisor last July, Wisla returned to the top flight in May to spark memorable scenes as an estimated 50,000 fans packed into the city’s historic main square to celebrate.
“It’s going to be a great, long weekend,” says Moore, about this friendly arranged to mark Wisla’s 120th anniversary. “Reminiscent of the old days when Wrexham would win the Welsh Cup and have all these great European trips to the likes of Porto, Anderlecht, Hadjuk Split.
“The American tours are great, but I tell you they are in for a treat in Krakow.”
Wisla Krakow fans celebrating top-flight promotion in May (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Asked about Saturday’s likely atmosphere, he laughs: “There may be more pyro involved than I’m comfortable with. I talked to Yonit Sharabi, who worked with me at Liverpool and is now supporter liaison (at Wrexham).
“Yonit is brilliant, does things by the book and took care of the Liverpool fans through the Champions League. But I’ve warned her this will be a little different!”
Sharabi is far from the only member of staff at Wrexham who worked under Moore during his three years at Anfield. Several others have made the move to the Raccourse Ground, including chief of staff Tina Roberts. Moore believes this off-field experience, together with the new Kop stand opening next year, can only help Wrexham’s push to become an established Premier League club.
“I did say a couple of years ago, ‘At some point, take a breather. Stabilise’,” he says about Wrexham’s rise from the fifth tier to the second in a record-breaking three years.
“Was I relieved (they didn’t go up last season)? Maybe it’s time to get the new stand built, start bringing in the matchday revenues we need to, start having 14,000 to 17,000 crowds regularly and stabilise.
“You do see clubs like Luton Town who come up (to the Premier League in 2023) and are not ready. Kenilworth Road (Luton’s stadium) was just not ready. And look at them now (in the third division after successive relegations). You are catapulted into this world and you can’t handle it. You’re not built to handle it.
“One thing I will say, through knowing as many people as I do who work in the front and back office at Wrexham — they are building a club who can handle the Premier League. From (CEO) Michael Williamson to Tina to Shaun (Harvey, director), obviously, you’re building an infrastructure in human talent, as well as the stadium, that will be ready when the team on the pitch is ready.
“Clubs have just not been ready in the past. But Wrexham will be. When that stand is built, it will be amazing.”
Once this weekend’s anniversary knees-up in Poland is over, Wrexham will play Manchester United in Helsinki, Finland, on July 18 before embarking on their third U.S. tour of the Mac/Reynolds era. First up on that trip, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, are Leeds United, followed by Liverpool in Yankee Stadium, New York, and then Sunderland at MLS club Philadelphia Union’s Subaru Park.
After that, the ‘real’ action begins with a Carabao Cup first-round tie away to fellow Championship side Middlesbrough on August 7, followed 10 days later by a visit to Cardiff City for a Welsh derby that kicks off a league season expected to feature a concerted push for another promotion.
Jaroslaw Krolewski and Peter Moore announcing the Wisla v Wrexham match in January (Marcin Golba/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
“It’s a Cinderella story for a town — now a city — that went through so many tough times,” says Moore, who played alongside Wrexham legends Joey Jones and Mickey Thomas for the North-East Wales representative team as a teenager.
“It’s indicative of what a football club can do to lift the spirits of a town that otherwise has few prospects. Now, you’re building not just local pride but global pride. It’s still bizarre to me, as a Wrexham lad living here (in California), that I can have a conversation with a stranger about Wrexham.”
Not that everyone will be best pleased if another promotion does materialise.
Wrexham’s rapid rise through the divisions has attracted plenty of critics, many of them unhappy at what they perceive as a club simply buying success and disrupting the natural order of things in the process or as an indicator of the creeping Americanisation of football.
“The haters will hate it,” laughs Moore, who has become used to the derogatory tags of ‘Hollywood FC’ or ‘Deadpool FC’ (after Reynolds’ movie franchise). “I’m a New England Patriots fan (from when he moved to Boston in 1992 to work for Reebok) and we have a saying going back to the Tom Brady days, when no one could beat the Patriots:
“‘They hate us because they ain’t us’.”