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Birmingham City minority shareholder Tom Brady wants to mirror Manchester City’s Etihad campus.
Brady invested in the Blues in the summer and has so far had mixed results since swapping NFL for football. The seven-time Super Bowl champion took the unpopular decision to replace John Eustace with Wayne Rooney, a move that has not yet been vindicated with Rooney winning just one of nine games at the Championship club.
However, Brady is seemingly fully on board with his Blues project, and he recently visited the home of Premier League champions Manchester City on a tour alongside the Blues’ chief executive Garry Cook.
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City’s Etihad Campus has the 53,000-seater stadium of the first-team, alongside a state-of-the-art training facility, academy and women’s stadium too. Speaking to BirminghamLive following their trip, Cook revealed that Brady was ‘blown away’ by City’s facilities, asking how the Blues can build something similar.
Cook said: “They (City) have built an academy and a training centre, which is attached to the stadium, which is absolutely magnificent and Tom Brady was blown away.
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"His first question is: ‘How do we get this? How do we make this happen?’ And his questions during the game: ‘How do we get better? What are the challenges we face?’”
Following in a similar vision to City’s could possibly require Birmingham to move out of St Andrew’s, which has been their home since 1906, if the club wish to meet the lofty ambitions of Brady. But that decision will rest with owner Tom Wagner instead.
St Andrew’s underwent renovations in the 1990s to bring the capacity up to 29,409, although it’s currently restricted to 19,000 due to repair work. Another problem with the Blues’ home is the little room around the outside to expand, and certainly not to build an entire campus around.
- Tom Brady
- Wayne Rooney
- Championship
- Manchester City FC
- Birmingham City FC
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