It Could Get Much Easier for Wrexham to Qualify for European Competition

A proposal would go into effect next season

Wrexham goal celebration
Wrexham's Paul Mullin celebrates his side's first goal on December 26, 2024.
Cody Froggatt/PA Images via Getty Images

Currently, Wrexham A.F.C. sit third in the table in League One, the third tier of English soccer. Unlike most clubs at that level, Wrexham’s global visibility is at a much higher level thanks in part to their famous owners and reality series — you’re not going to see, say, Leyton Orient going on a high-profile tour of the U.S. any time soon. (Though Birmingham City, currently atop the table, does also have a pretty notable celebrity owner of its own.)

But if you’ve been watching Welcome to Wrexham regularly and wondering if you might see a certain club competing against teams from all over Europe — that’s less of a stretch than you might expect. As The Athletic’s Richard Sutcliffe reports, there’s a proposal currently being considered that could give Wrexham an easier path to continental competition. And while it’s unlikely to lead to a Wrexham-Real Madrid Champions League showdown any time soon, it could make for some interesting matchups.

Virtually all domestic soccer organizations host an annual tournament featuring teams from all levels of the sport. Germany has the DFB-Pokal, the U.S. has the U.S. Open Cup and England has — well, England has both the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup. Some of the entertainment can come from seeing two teams at wildly different levels of the game play one another — my beloved Tottenham Hotspur took on fifth-division Tamworth in the FA Cup this weekend, for instance.

Several teams based in Wales — Wrexham, Swansea, Newport County and Cardiff City — play in the English soccer pyramid. However, Wales also has its own domestic league — and the proposal The Athletic describes would see these four teams opt out of the English cups to take part in a Welsh cup competition. If the plan is approved — and that’s not guaranteed — a revised edition of the Welsh League Cup would begin next season, with the winner qualifying for the UEFA Conference League.

There is some precedence for this, and it’s fairly close to home. Three Canadian teams play in Major League Soccer, but they also take part in the annual Canadian Championship along with clubs from the Canadian Premier League. The winners qualify for the following year’s CONCACAF Champions Cup.

As The Athletic reports, the Football Association of Wales is supportive of this proposal, which could also benefit Wales’s overall position in European soccer. The English Football League, reportedly, is more skeptical, which could be a barrier to the plan’s implementation.

That said, it’s not hard to imagine any of the four Welsh clubs currently playing in English leagues coming into a domestic cup competition with a significant advantage. And what that might mean for teams like The New Saints — the Welsh club that’s made European history already this season — remains to be seen. The Welsh soccer landscape might look very different this time next year.

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