THE messages on the Birmingham WhatsApp group were going mad yesterday morning.
Imagine this. You’re in a highly competitive workplace NFL Fantasy Football competition and there’s an announcement that Tom Brady — a seven-time Super Bowl winner and the greatest quarterback in history — has joined your company.
Because that’s exactly what’s happened for those Blues players and staff.
I’m still in that Fantasy Football competition despite leaving my home-town club this summer and, frankly, I’m worried I’ll be kicked out of it.
As one of the boys messaged: “Who’s going to make way for Tom Brady?”
There are 12 of us in the competition, eight players and four staff members — and it’s great because if you choose one player in the draft then no one else can have him.
READ MORE IN FOOTBALL
I don’t really want to give him any credit because he was not a gracious winner but striker Lukas Jutkiewicz won our fantasy league last season.
And he’s so sure of himself that he probably thinks he will beat Tom Brady at it, too!
Brady has become a minority owner of Birmingham City as well as chairman of the club’s advisory board.
The boys are absolutely buzzing about the prospect of meeting Brady, who will apparently be passing on advice on fitness and nutrition to them as well as working on commercial projects.
Most read in Championship
DREAM TEAM IS LIVE – JOIN NOW TO BATTLE FOR THE £50k TOP PRIZE
There was already real optimism that the club would move in the right direction under the new American ownership of Tom Wagner’s Knighthead Capital Management.
But the involvement of Brady, one of the biggest names in world sport, has added to that.
If I tell you a little about playing for Birmingham over the past two seasons, you will understand the scale of the transformation at the club.
It’s 100 per cent true that if Blues hadn’t had the right manager, John Eustace, we would have been relegated last season.
Sometimes we were going into training not knowing whether the old ownership had signed off the purchase of footballs for us to practise with.
If you wanted an ice bath, it was often broken. Players were chipping in with their own money for things.
On match days, two stands were closed and the playing surface was terrible because the women’s team and the Under-23s were playing all of their matches on it.
The job Eustace did in leading the club comfortably clear of relegation was outstanding and I hope he gets the time to advance his philosophy and playing style under the new owners.
Brady is the latest celebrity from American sports and entertainment to buy into English football, after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney taking over Wrexham.
Another Hollywood actor Michael B Jordan investing in Bournemouth and Major golf champions Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas joining the new ownership at Leeds.
The success of Wrexham — promoted back to the Football League and enjoying a high-profile US Tour on the back of the club’s Disney documentary — has got a lot of Americans interested in English football at lower levels as well as the Premier League.
For these Americans, it’s not necessarily about the wealthiest or most successful clubs, it’s about great people.
So it would not surprise me if Birmingham have a Netflix or Amazon documentary made about them as well.
Those projects, as well as the investment of someone like Brady, are not just PR gimmicks. They say a lot about a club’s direction.
Some of the Leeds lads have watched the Full Swing Netflix documentary about the PGA Tour and will be excited about the involvement of Spieth and Thomas.
It all adds glamour to the new Championship season, which starts with newly promoted Sheffield Wednesday against newly relegated Southampton.
Playing in the Championship is relentless and unpredictable. It’s two games per week, so it’s hard work but also immense fun.
I’ve experienced both ends of it.
At Watford, we were still being run like a Premier League club when we were promoted back to the top tier . . . staying in the best hotels, flying to away games and no expense spared with facilities.
At Blues, it was very different . . . wondering if we had enough footballs, staying in average hotels and spending hours stuck on buses in motorway traffic jams on Friday afternoons.
All that may change for Birmingham now but in such a competitive league, a top-half finish would still be good — but I fancy them to make the play-offs.
My time at my boyhood club came to an end this summer but it was a great honour to captain them for two years.
Read More on The Sun
And even though I’ve left, the arrival of Brady has excited me, just as it’s excited the rest of that WhatsApp group.
Please don’t kick me out of the Fantasy Football, lads!
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
