FORGET the Championship — Birmingham City’s vision is the Champions League.
In a stadium to die for. And with Tom Brady as the ace in their recruitment pack.
It is a long way from Jasper Carrott joking about his beloved Blues. Too much, too soon?
Not if you listen to Tom Wagner, the billionaire financier and founder of the club’s ambitious owners, Knighthead Capital.
For Wagner, 56, barely two years into his St Andrew’s reign, there is an inevitability that the dreams of Blues fans will become a reality.
Wagner explained: “I position the club as a great underdog, a long-time sleeping giant, overlooked for an awfully long time.
“It’s been incomprehensible to me from the beginning that the name team in England’s second city isn’t one of the top teams in English football.
“I recognise it’s a long way to go from where we are to get to there. But without great vision and objectives, it’s very difficult to do great things. So why not shoot for the very best?”
That very best is a 62,000-capacity stadium, the centrepiece of a new £3billion “Birmingham Sports Quarter” to be constructed three quarters of a mile from the club’s home since 1906.
Not just a new football stadium with a retractable pitch allowing it to be a concert venue, but also a purpose-built stadium for City’s women’s side, an indoor arena, training ground pitches and residential and entertainment developments on the derelict site of the former home of the city’s late speedway team.
The project will bring 10,000 jobs in the construction period and a further 8,400 openings by 2035, and all served by a new tram line and upgraded train station in a £400million infrastructure plan backed by the Government.
What is described by Wagner as a stadium proposal that will “reflect Birmingham’s industrial heritage” is due to be unveiled in the coming weeks, with official planning consent sought next year and ground first broken in 2027.
Blues have averaged crowds of just over 27,000 this season, but Wagner kicked back at suggestions he was looking to run before the club had learned to walk.
He said: “You’re suggesting we don’t have enough fans to fill 62,000?
“We sold 50,000 seats at Wembley last year for our Vertu Trophy final. We had 22,000 people live on the phone waiting to buy tickets when the last ticket was sold.
“So the demand is there. We don’t need to sell 62,000 every single game in year one.
“But I bet we will every Saturday, and we’d do it in the Championship.”
Wagner has already walked the walk to go with talking the talk, paying £40m to purchase a 49 per cent share of the Birmingham Phoenix team in cricket The Hundred and also taking a stake in the Birmingham Panthers netball side.
Not just about Birmingham
It is all part of the overall plan to make the second city a sporting metropolis.
And unlike some Birmingham fans, Wagner even wants Aston Villa to succeed – at least, to an extent.
He added: “I’ve said it 1,000 times and I’ll say it 1,000 times more. We want success in Birmingham.
“We don’t want to shoot for mediocrity, we want to shoot for excellence. And of course we’re shooting to recreate one of the great derbies in UK football.
“Of course there’s great joy in the misery of your crosstown rivals. I respect that, and that’s what makes it great.
“But if I were to root against Villa or Wolves, then I’m lessening the quality of Birmingham football writ large.
Champions League final ‘dream’
“Why are [Manchester] United and [Manchester] City so big? Because they’re two great clubs in the same city.
“Why are the various clubs in London so powerful and have such great brand appeal? Because there are so many great derbies across the city.
“And why wouldn’t we want something like that to exist in Birmingham as well? The more attention that’s brought to those rivalries, the more investment that will flow.
“So for me, the dream scenario would be a Champions League final against Villa.”
Brady ‘super involved’
Not that it started well, with relegation, although that allowed Wagner to joke: “We were warned in the acquisition, it’s really hard to get out of the Championship. We actually found it very easy!”
Since then, of course, the direction has been onwards and upwards. Of course, it helps when you have one of the world’s great sporting icons on your board.
NFL legend Brady, 48, has a cachet that transcends his stunning gridiron career.
Wagner said: “Tom just really wanted to do something in sport with me to raise the profile.
“He’s super involved and when we’re trying to recruit a player, we can jump on Zoom with him and Tom together and have him articulate his view and vision for what we can become. That’s his value, and it’s immeasurable.”
But Wagner, the man with the playbook in his head, is very much the quarterback orchestrating Birmingham’s end-zone drive.
And he does not sound like a bloke who will settle for anything less than a touchdown.
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