It was one of football’s more surreal crossovers, an NFL legend teaming up with an English football icon at a struggling Championship club. But when Tom Brady’s documentary “Built in Birmingham: Brady & the Blues” aired, it left Wayne Rooney feeling more than a little let down.
Brady, who had joined Birmingham City as a minority owner and adviser to the club’s leadership, was captured questioning Rooney’s commitment during his short managerial stint.
In the documentary, Brady said to his business manager, Ben Rawitz: “I’m a little worried about our head coach’s work ethic. I mean, I don’t have great instincts on that.”
Wayne Rooney says NFL legend Tom Brady never ‘understood football’
Those words, heard around the world of sport, didn’t sit well with Rooney, who hit back months later.
He said: “I don’t think he really understood football that well. Tom came in once, which was the day before a game where the days are a little bit lighter anyway. What he does understand is, he’s a hard worker, we know that.”
Brady was also seen labelling some Birmingham City players “lazy and entitled” which inRooney’s view highlighted the NFL superstar’s misunderstanding of the sport.
“Football is not NFL, NFL works for three months a year. Players do need rest as well,” Rooney said. “I think he’s very unfair, the way he’s come out and portrayed that.”
The Manchester United legend’s spell in the Second City was short-lived, he managed just two wins in 15 games before being dismissed.
Wayne Rooney praises Tom Brady as ‘one of the greatest’
Rooney has since defended his time at Blues. Speaking months later, he said: “When I went into Birmingham, they were in a mess really. The players weren’t really the players who could take the club forward. You had Tony Mowbray and Gary Rowett after me, who also struggled.”
In hindsight, the clash between the pair feels almost inevitable, two titans of different sports struggling to find common ground. Yet even amid the friction, Rooney offered a gracious nod to Brady’s legacy.
“I respect Tom Brady massively,” he said. “He’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest, athletes of all time.”
Birmingham were eventually relegated to the third tier but would later rise again under Chris Davies, storming to the League One title with a record 111 points. But the brief Rooney-Brady era remains one of football’s strangest chapters, and one that clearly left Rooney really disappointed by how his American partner viewed the game.
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