Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in EnglishTom Brady is standing on the pitch at Wembley, embracing the atmosphere and discussing the moments leading up to a final.“It always feels like a different energy because the context is slightly different,” the seven-time Super Bowl winner and minority investor in Birmingham City tells The Athletic ahead of kick-off.Despite all the high-profile NFL encounters he was involved in as a player with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, this showpiece occasion in the EFL (English Football League) Trophy — the knockout competition contested by teams in League One and League Two (the third and fourth tiers of the game in England), plus academy sides from the Premier League — has piqued his interest.Dressed as sharp as his throwing skills once were, with sunglasses keeping out the glare of the fading sun, Brady attended Wembley on Sunday first to congratulate Birmingham on their promotion to the Championship and then to see whether they could add another trophy to an impressive campaign.“Unfortunately I can’t be out on a sports pitch anymore (as a player) but I can contribute in other ways,” the 47-year-old former quarterback says. “I really want to see young guys maximise their potential and I’ve seen the ways that sport can impact a community, so I want to be a part of that.”A 2-0 defeat to Peterborough United — who have never lost at Wembley — won’t stop him Brady his tracks. Although this was a rare taste of disappointment for Birmingham this season, the bigger picture still looks bright for them. In a week where the club confirmed their return to the second tier and were crowned League One champions on Saturday as Wrexham dropped further points, this cup-final heartache can be quickly forgotten.Although defeat was not in the script, it’s also not lost on the loyal supporters that doing the business in the league was more important than anything else this season. In 2011, when Birmingham were last at the national stadium, they won the League Cup final against Arsenal before suffering relegation from the Premier League a couple of months later.It’s only now that the club are properly recovering from the mismanagement that followed for over a decade as owners Knighthead, fronted by chairman Tom Wagner, alongside the subtle assistance of Brady, look to transform the future.
Brady and Wagner console the Birmingham players after defeat at Wembley (Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)Perhaps this is a bump in the road. Certainly, it’s a victory for the rest of the teams competing in the EFL Trophy.Big-spending Birmingham have won few friends among their League One peers this season as they swiped players from rival clubs — Alfie May from Charlton Athletic being the prominent example — and distorted the market by paying huge salaries to new signings. Their swagger has bordered on arrogance throughout.Peterborough’s director of football, Barry Fry, who was Birmingham’s manager when they won this trophy in 1995, said: “Nobody gave us a cat in hell’s chance. We’ve had an awful season in the league, so I understand that but everybody at Birmingham — and in the country for that matter — felt it was going to be ‘how many will Blues (Birmingham) win by’.Birmingham do not apologise for their grand plans and ambition. Brady knows all about others hating on a team, as when he was winning everything with the Patriots, he had to soak up the bitterness from elsewhere.“It’s just a little bit of human nature, but it’s OK, you take the positive and understand that the rest is part of sport,” he says. “Ultimately, you have to deal with a lot of things that distract you, but you still have to perform at your best. I always feel the better you do, the more you take on, and if you embrace it in the right way, you can use it as a positive.”Wearing a gloomy look in his VIP seat on the final whistle, Brady recognised this was not to be Birmingham’s day. Yet as the beaten team walked up those Wembley stairs knowing there was no trophy waiting for them at the top, it was a rare sight to see Wagner organise a huddle and share some passionate words with the group. Brady nodded along and clapped his comments. That at least showed the togetherness in a time of despair.“We don’t go out on the pitch to be mediocre,” Wagner told The Athletic. “That was our objective this year and it will be the same next year and every other year we’re at the club. We won’t change.”Speaking after the game, Wagner was asked by reporters what his first task will be this morning (Monday), and replied: “Figure out how to f***ing win. We need to learn to win at a higher level and we need to find a way to prepare ourselves for an even higher level than that. There’s a lot of work to be done.”
Tom Wagner and Tom Brady at Birmingham City in September (Nick Potts/Getty Images)Lifting the manager Chris Davies, the players and the supporters will not be a difficult task, though.Birmingham need to win three of their six remaining league games to see them eclipse Wolverhampton Wanderers’ 103 points from the 2013-14 season, the highest total ever achieved in League One. “We still have an opportunity to do something that was not on our radar at the start of the season; to do something that has never been done before,” Wagner says in reference to the potential record points haul.There’s the excitement of building the Sports Quarter in central Birmingham — a £3billion ($3.9bn) project that will include a 60,000-seater new stadium for the club, alongside a sports campus with training facilities. “I’m confident we will get there because it makes so much sense,” Wagner adds.A new documentary series will also be screened on Amazon Prime this summer, detailing the journey of Birmingham’s season, and the revenue generated from that will help rebuild the squad further ahead of their return to the Championship.“Without having had the tailwind of the documentary series distributed by Amazon to over 200 countries, we would have already been on a path to have the same level of revenue as parachute clubs next year in the Championship (those recently relegated from the Premier League), which is something that has never happened before,” Wagner says.“With the tailwind of a documentary series and so many global partners, we’ve got a lot to come on the revenue side, and we need that to get the (right) players. We are focused on making this a commercially-viable club. I will not rest until we are the most powerful revenue-generating club in the Championship by a wide margin, including those who get parachute payments.“I also promise every Bluenose (Birmingham fans) out there that we will not stop until we hit our other longer-term objectives, too. It would be a crime against my beliefs for me to say anything other than I hate losing, so I wanted our fans to celebrate here at Wembley, but we won’t change.“Seeing the supporters singing so loud is what it is all about. It’s about preserving all this (noise). We all believe in it and we don’t want to harm it. We want it to continue.”(Top photo: Richard Pelham/Getty Images)
