The Athletic FC: Wrexham, Tatum and a Super Bowl ad; Newcastle eye glory, Trump's World Cup trophy

New York Times

06-02-2025

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Hello! Channing Tatum meets Wrexham and Super Bowl LIX. Yup, you read that right.
On the way:
📺 Wrexham go NFL prime time
💭 Newcastle's 70-year dream
🏀 Doncic trade, in football terms
🏆 World Cup in the Oval Office
Like the average business, SToK Cold Brew Coffee promotes its products on YouTube. Viewing numbers for some of its videos scrape into three figures. But when the company mashed up Wrexham Football Club and Sir Anthony Hopkins for a Super Bowl advert last year, 288,000 tuned in.
The Super Bowl is back on Sunday, for edition LIX (59, for those of you who didn't study Latin in school), and so are SToK and Wrexham. Hopkins has bowed out — Hannibal Lecter retreating to his cell — but fellow actor and red-carpet prowler Channing Tatum is the face of this year's cold-caffeine commercial. It's Wrexham going global, again.
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The new advertisement, which features Tatum trying to teach Wrexham's squad to dance, will be aired during the Super Bowl on Fox Sports and the NFL app, for no small fee. Thirty seconds of airtime can cost a brand up to $8million (£6.4m). But it buys exposure to a vast audience — 123.4m in the United States 12 months ago — and Wrexham are reaching where other clubs of their stature cannot.
No secret as to why, of course. They have Hollywood owners and a mounting list of box-office fans, including Tatum. When he attended a Wrexham game before Christmas and drank in a local pub, it was TAFC's most-clicked story for days. The curiosity is real and in a week when the League One team published plans for a revamped stadium — a ground SToK sponsors — the expansion drive is on.
Richard Sutcliffe, our resident Wrexham writer, spoke exclusively to Tatum about SToK's promo, which you can watch here (straight up: it's pretty funny). The Magic Mike star talked about filling Welshman Hopkins' shoes, faceplanting on a table in Wrexham's dressing room and staying onside with athletes who might have resented 'this dumb American actor, coming in here and doing whatever'.
I hear the cries of 'gimmick', and I get it. I get the rolling eyes that greet the publicity around Wrexham, too. But they're two divisions below the Premier League (and in good shape for a third straight promotion) and while the best of the best don't lack hype in the States, many teams would kill for a primetime Super Bowl slot. The thought alone is outlandish.
The longer the story runs, the easier it is to believe that this modest club from north Wales are a mile below their ceiling. There's no end to the levers they seem able to pull.
Tatum's Super Bowl mission is about cold coffee but it's also about Wrexham. And in the 21st century, that's how word spreads.
Trolling, lest Arsenal forget, is a two-way street. They delighted in goading Manchester City on Sunday but as their Carabao Cup run died last night, the crowd at Newcastle United wound up Mikel Arteta with chants of 'It must be the ball' — a nod to his complaints about the Puma Orbita 1.
Newcastle's X account got involved, too.
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Actually, Arsenal's defeat over two semi-final legs was down to Newcastle coach Eddie Howe nailing it tactically, his main men bossing the midfield perfectly and Alexander Isak giving William Saliba the heebie-jeebies.
A minute in the first half last night was all it took. With Arsenal 2-0 in arrears after the first match in London, their captain Martin Odegaard was this close to calling 'Game on' (check the premature celebration behind him)…
…only for Jacob Murphy's goal to scream 'Game over' at the other end seconds later.
Did Newcastle want it more? Maybe. Don't forget, the club haven't won a major domestic trophy since 1955. To put that into context, James Dean was alive to see it — so they're not without a cause.
(Selected games, times ET/UK)
Serie A: Fiorentina vs Inter Milan, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+, Fubo/TNT Sports, OneFootball.
Copa del Rey quarter-final: Valencia vs Barcelona, 3.30pm/8.30pm — ESPN+ (U.S. only)
Women's League Cup semi-final: Arsenal vs Manchester City, 2pm/7pm — BBC iPlayer (UK only).
In the reams of political coverage of Donald Trump, the eagle-eyed among you might have noticed the World Cup trophy photographed behind him in the Oval Office. And wondered what it was doing there.
For starters, only a very select group of people are permitted to lay their hands on football's ultimate prize. That does include heads of state (although something tells me Trump might circumnavigate that rule, even if it didn't) but it's why professional pain-in-the-a*** Salt Bae caused such a fuss by grabbing hold of it after the 2022 final in Qatar.
Moreover, the trophy only comes out on exceptionally special occasions — so it's safe to conclude, and this has been confirmed by FIFA, that the version in the U.S. president's office is no more than a replica.
Was it gifted to him by his mate, FIFA president Gianni Infantino? I'm guessing yes.