Brady queries Rooney's 'work ethic' at Birmingham

NFL legend Tom Brady has questioned Wayne Rooney's attitude during the ex-England captain's tenure as manager of Birmingham City, where Brady is a minority owner.

In a new Amazon Prime documentary series, due to air on Friday, seven-time Super Bowl winner Brady tells colleagues: "I'm a little worried about our head coach's work ethic," before adding: "I mean, I don't know, I don't have great instincts on that."

Brady, who also calls Blues players "lazy and entitled" in the series, made his comments about Rooney following a visit to the club's training ground in November 2023.

Filmed conversations between the former quarterback and then manager Rooney appear awkward.

In one exchange, the ex-Everton and Manchester United striker tells his employer about some of the cultural problems he perceives at the club.

"Why they're playing in the Championship and not the Premier League," Rooney says, "is because... we've all passed a ball, kicked the ball and run, but it's a focus, concentrated for 90 minutes."

In scenes that follow, Brady is filmed watching a training session, saying: "We've got a long road ahead."

The retired quarterback - widely considered the best player in NFL history - became a minority owner in the club in August 2023, following a takeover the previous month by Knighthead Capital Management LLC, co-founded by financier Tom Wagner.

The club were relegated to League One in the first year under their new ownership after going through seven managers in 10 months.

Two months after Brady arrived in 2023, manager John Eustace was controversially replaced by Rooney, with the Blues sitting sixth in the Championship.

However, with the club then plummeting to 20th in the table, Rooney only lasted 83 days in charge at St Andrew's.

At the time, Rooney said that he did not feel 13 weeks was "sufficient to oversee the changes that were needed".

During the series, Blues fan Paul Collins speculates that the appointment had been based on a desire by the ownership to hire "one of the most recognisable English footballers of the last generation" in order to "put a load of eyes on Birmingham City".

Collins asks: "What qualifies Wayne to manage Birmingham City? Nothing."

Brady also reflects on the owners' disastrous first season in charge.

"There was some good advice that I got that was like, 'listen, don't go in there and make these big, sweeping changes - you guys have time'," he said.

"And of course we make sweeping changes."

Relegation from the Championship at the end of 2023-24 meant Birmingham dropped out of English football's top two tiers for only the third time in their history.

During the series, Brady reflects on where things went wrong, blaming the players.

"Well we've already changed the coach, so it's really the players because the coach doesn't go out there and put the ball in the goal," he says.

"They were lazy, they were entitled and when you're lazy and entitled, you don't have much of a chance to succeed.

"We've got to change all the people that are associated with losing, so I think this summer there's going to be a lot of people gone."

That summer, the club invested £30m in transfers, an unprecedented figure for League One.

The following year, Birmingham broke the Football League record for most points in a season, finishing top of League One with a tally of 111.

During one scene, on his way to visit Birmingham's training ground, Brady's manager Ben Rawitz jokes about the NFL legend struggling to locate the club's Elite Performance and Innovation Centre on a map.

"That's the owner right there, he doesn't know where his training facility is," Rawitz says, later comparing the facilities to a "high school".

In another scene, during a separate visit to the city, Brady asks a colleague "What's the other team here?", following up by asking "is Aston Villa in the Premier League?".

There are comparisons throughout the series to fellow Championship club Wrexham, who have enjoyed three consecutive promotions since the Welsh club's £2m takeover in February 2021 by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Wagner dismisses the idea that the two clubs should be considered in the same bracket.

"They've done a spectacular job at bringing attention to a small club," he says.

"I think what we have here is a club that's already a very big club and so, from our perspective, it's a bit different. The ambitions for us in the context of what we'll build is bigger than what they'll do at Wrexham."

In a separate scene, he says: "Our target's not Wrexham. Our target is to play Premier League football against Villa."