If you listened to our Wrexham Promotion Special of the Sportin Wales podcast, you would have heard the thoughts of ex-Wrexham manager Brian Flynn and journalist Bryn Law as they ran the rule over a fantastic season for the club.

Wrexham enjoyed their second successive promotion and next season will be taking their place in League One having spent 15 seasons in non-league football.

While revelling in Wrexham’s success, both Flynn and Law mentioned a former Red Dragons player in Tony Merola.

Flynn was Merola’s manager at Wrexham and said on the podcast: “I gave him [Merola] his debut against Linfield, I think it was in Windsor Park.”

“He was a talented young player. Small stocky striker with a knack of scoring goals but unfortunately, he didn’t have any pace whatsoever and that was lacking so he didn’t quite make it with us.”

Speaking with Sportin Wales, Merola responded to those comments and told all about his Wrexham Texans football academy.

“I was fast, Brian Flynn doesn’t know a fast player when he sees one because he was never fast,” jokes Merola.

“He said I didn’t make it because I didn’t have enough pace, but I think there was a lot more to it than that, I just didn’t have that desire.

“As a schoolboy from 14-16, I was at Wigan but that was a mistake, too far to go with transport and everything from Mold. The late Cliff Sear knew about this because I was in a couple of Welsh development centres with Mike Rigg and he offered me a two-year YTS [youth training scheme] at Wrexham.

“The first year was tough because in May I was in a classroom full of kids and then in June I was in the locker room with a group of professionals who’d just knocked Arsenal out of the FA Cup, so I had to grow up really fast.

“It was a big transition, I had a good preseason, made my debut with Brian Flynn out in Ireland at 17, pro contract at 18. I thought I’d made it, but it was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me.

“I was popular with the ladies, popular with my friends, all my mates would watch Wrexham games. I was the last person in and first person out when I was a pro.”

The penny dropped too late for Merola while at Wrexham, which eventually saw him released by Flynn although there are no hard feelings between the two.

“My dad gave me a kick up the backside,” said Merola.

“At the time I had a hernia operation, out for two months towards the end of the season. I’d been playing for six to eight weeks in the reserves with a groin strain and the physio department thought I was faking it, I sort of was because I’d tried to do that at the beginning of the season.

“I couldn’t be bothered going to Halifax away, I’d rather stay with the girlfriend I had at the time. My dad said, ‘I think you having the hernia has saved you, they’ll give you another six-month contract and that’s when you need to get down to work.’

“But it was too late, we had some good youngsters coming through, Neil Roberts and others, when I went into Flynn’s office, and he said he wasn’t going to offer me a new contract it was almost a relief.

“I wanted to go out with my mates on a Friday night, eat a burger, hang out with my girlfriend who, when I got released, dumped me by the way!”

Entering training with the first team can be difficult for any footballer coming out of the youth or academy sides and for Merola it was no different.

“I look back now, and I didn’t think it was daunting, but it was,” said Merola.

“Watching from the terraces as a 16-year-old, the likes of Steve Watkin, Karl Connolly, Mel Pejic, Mark Morris, some of those are still close friends of mine.

“The first 12 months was a wakeup call as I spent my time staring at Steve Watkin and Gary Bennett rather than getting stuck in with them and being me, looking back I thought I wasn’t good enough, but I look back at the players and I was never getting past Watkin or Bennett.

“I thought: ‘I’ll go and play on the wing’, but then I had Karl Connolly, I wasn’t going to get past him, the late Kieron Durkan, Jonathan Cross, so I thought I’d try and be a midfield player, Wayne Phillips, Gareth Owen and Mike Lake and I wasn’t going to be a defender because I’m 5”5 and can’t head it.

“Don’t forget, in the reserves we had Joey Jones and Micky Thomas as well! Second year I sponged a lot from them but then switched off and that’s why I’m so passionate about coaching now, I don’t want to see players make the same mistakes I did.

“Maybe I was just in an era of players who were just really good? A mate of mine, Bryan Hughes, first million-pound player to come from Wrexham, we came through together on YTS, he went to Birmingham for a million pounds, and I went to Rhyl on a free.”

Life didn’t get easier for Merola after his move to Rhyl, although it did put him in esteemed company.

“Playing in the Welsh Premier League I ruptured both my Achilles tendons within 18 months,” said Merola.

“A little bit of a comparison, David Beckham did it at a similar time…that’s where the comparison ends.”

While Merola’s professional career didn’t reach the heights he’d hoped he has found a second life in coaching which began in North Wales but has taken him across the Atlantic Ocean and into the heart of the Southern states of USA.

“At 29, I got into coaching through the Welsh FA, did all the badges,” said Merola.

“I loved America, but I didn’t realise to come here you’d need to have a degree so at 31 went back to Glyndwr University got a degree and now the rest is history.

“I was always trying to drip feed Wrexham here through my coaching, but a lot of people over here didn’t know anything about it and were spelling it without a ‘W’.

“My wife loves to make things up and make things and said – ‘Wrexham Texans its catchy’, it started out the year before Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney got involved, I was trying to get other parents I was coaching with to get involved as supporters.”

Whilst it began as a supporter’s group, soon, the Wrexham Texans became much more than that for Merola.

“Once the owners came on board and the show everything has had a match lit underneath it and it was no longer just a supporters group it was kids wanting to be trained by me,” said Merola.

“I jumped on it, made the Wrexham Texans football academy, used all the methodologies I did whilst I was at Wrexham, working with Dean Saunders as a video analyst, first team scout and bundled it all together and this is mine now.

“I liked the idea of being a professional soccer player, I didn’t have and didn’t like the work ethic or the sacrifices that went with it.

“That’s what I say to the players coming through is that if you don’t have that attitude to be better than the players to the left and right then you’re just going to be one player in a big pool and you’re going to get lost.”

Whilst the academy is a financial opportunity for Merola the Wrexham Texan’s also gives him a tie to home.

“Kids are identifying it with it, asking ‘Did you see Mullin’s goal at the weekend? Are they going to sign that keeper from Arsenal?’ It’s making home feel so close for me,” said Merola.

“10 years ago, I couldn’t listen to the games on BBC, whilst now I’m seeing more games than my dad who’s back in North Wales but doesn’t go to away games.

“It’s 5,000 miles, a nine-hour flight but it doesn’t feel like it. I’m getting random requests from people in Ohio and San Francisco from other Wrexham fans.

“My dad was at the home game against Forest Green when Wrexham secured their promotion, having a beer and there was a fan there from Fort Worth, 15 minutes from me.

“Americans are going over and they’re so into it because they’ve never had the Premier League or been able to connect to a community like Wrexham.

“When me and some supporters watched the game against Sheffield United last year in Fort Worth the whole place erupted, there were Premier League fans in there, but Wrexham is becoming everyone’s second team.”

Football, or soccer as Merola now calls it, is continuing to grow in the US and with Lionel Messi at Inter Miami, coupled with Wrexham, and the small matter of the 2026 North America World Cup, it is only likely to accelerate further in popularity.

It seems only a matter of time before American players in the Premier League such as Clint Dempsey, Christian Pulisic and Tyler Adams become the norm, but Merola hopes he can have an influence on bringing players over to Wrexham.

“I coach a semi-professional team for 3 months in the year while they’re off in the summer,” said Merola.

“We had three try outs where about 115 were trying out, and of those about 85 to 90 were at a decent level. Very athletic, very savvy, and hungry, just missing that technical proficiency.

“I think within five or six years there will be players breaking through and that’s my ultimate goal. Can you imagine if we could get an American player into the Wrexham team, the elevation for the club over here?

“If you want to go and play in the UK, we have pathways which we can send you there, but likewise if there are players not good enough right now for the UK or wanting to come to the US and study then they can, we’re trying to set up that pathway and bridge.

“The standard is getting better every year, if you come to the Wrexham Texans football academy, you’re going to improve your technique and then bring that to the tactical work your coach wants you to do.”