'Necaxa' Ricardo Soria/FX Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Without prelude, Eva Longoria suddenly popped up in the second episode of this spring's fourth season of FX's Welcome to Wrexham, cheering alongside Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny (now Rob Mac) in the crowd at the Racecourse. "We'll explain later," onscreen text informed viewers. No explanation was actually given at the time. Necaxa The Bottom Line Enjoyable, but can't reproduce its predecessor's formula. Airdate: 9 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 7 (FXX)Cast: Eva Longoria, Ryan Reynolds, Rob Mac But elucidation arrives on FXX (and Hulu) this week in the form of Necaxa, a spinoff or companion series from many of the same producers, focusing on Longoria and her role with Club Necaxa, a once storied, now struggling team in Mexico's Liga MX. Related Stories Movies 'The Pickup' Review: Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson's Lively Chemistry Helps Steady Amazon's Bumpy Heist Comedy News Ryan Reynolds Zings Rob Mac at Just for Laughs Awards The "Famous People Buy Struggling Soccer Team" genre had only one entry as recently as May, and it was a good one. Welcome to Wrexham, which made my Top 10 list for last year, has become one of my favorite pieces of comfort food, a funny and inspiring sports series that makes me laugh and cry in equal measure. Now, in a 10-day window - I'm going to repeat that: 10 DAYS - we've added three new shows that, without hesitation, acknowledge the potency of the Welcome to Wrexham brand. While Necaxa (pronounced "nih-cox-uh") is the only direct offshoot, Amazon's Built in Birmingham (about Tom Brady and Birmingham City) and ESPN's Running with the Wolves (Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and Campobasso FC) both find ways to acknowledge Mac and Reynolds sooner than later. It's not a fruitful comparison for these series to be stuck making. Welcome to Wrexham is a series that does five or six difficult things extremely well. The three successors, at least so far, do maybe one or two things well apiece. Necaxa adds to the necessity of the comparison by trying with limited success to reproduce large swaths of the sui generis formula. There are fresh aspects to the series, which tells its story largely in Spanish, through its first five episodes, but you know the drill. Longoria, raised by her father to be a Cowboys fan in a different sort of football, married José Bastón in Mexico in 2016. They've lived, with their son, between Spain and Mexico for several years. Club Necaxa was founded in 1923 and originally played in Mexico City. The team has won three league championships, but none recently. Hoping to restore Necaxa to its former glory, several groups of international investors have bought into the franchise, one of which features Eva Longoria. If this is a genre that television intends to oversaturate us with, I have what I think is a reasonable request: I'm gonna need transparency on two key points. First, I need to understand exactly the degree of ownership stake the focal celebrity has. If everybody can be called an "owner" or "co-owner" of a professional sports team, regardless of financial commitment, the terminology loses all meaning. In the case of Mac and Reynolds, it's easy. They purchased Wrexham FC in its entirety, and while they've diversified the ownership group around them, they've remained the primary owners. The newer celebrity "owners" exist in a fuzzier space. According to the New York Times, while Brady is part of a minority ownership group on Birmingham City, he owns roughly 3.3 percent of the club. Consuelos and Ripa are also part of a minority ownership group on Campobasso FX, and the specific logistics around that group, which you can read about, are far more complicated than the show has any interest in trying to explain, which is strange. As for Necaxa, Longoria is also part of a minority ownership group and, to the series' credit, it refers to her primarily as an "investor" (Welcome to Wrexham called her a "co-owner"). But she's just one celebrity within that group and no mention is given, for example, to Justin Verlander and Kate Upton, Necaxa "investors" as well. That brings me to my more urgent level of mandatory disclosure. It needs to be said what actual, tangible power these celebrity "owners" have within the team. Again, Mac and Reynolds may have hired people - increasingly more people with each step up the English professional ladder - to operate the team, but they have full control. Brady has none in Birmingham and admits he's basically there to offer sage and inspiring advice that nobody on the team would ever think of, like how practice is important and whatnot. I don't know what authority Consuelos actually has with Campobasso, but darned if Running with the Wolves doesn't give the impression that he's pulling the strings, e