English soccer icon Wayne Rooney isn’t happy with the way American football icon Tom Brady is talking about him.
Rooney said that the former New England Patriots quarterback was “very unfair” in questioning his work ethic.
The two crossed paths during Rooney’s time as the manager of the English soccer team, Birmingham City, for which Brady is a minority owner. A recent clip from Birmingham City’s Amazon Prime documentary series caused a stir by showing that Brady apparently did not think highly of the team’s manager at the time.
“I’m a little worried about our head coach’s work ethic,” Brady was shown saying after his initial meeting with Rooney.
During a recent episode of the BBC’s “Wayne Rooney Show,” the former Birmingham manager shot back at Brady, saying that the former quarterback visited the team right before a game, which meant a lighter workload for players.
“I’m really disappointed with the comment. Football is not NFL. NFL works for three months a year. Players do need rest as well. So I think he was very unfair, the way he’s come out and portrayed that,” Rooney said.
Rooney also placed blame on the state of the team.
“I think it was a very unfair comment,” Rooney said. When I went to Birmingham, it was in a mess, really, hence the fact that, I went in, the players weren’t the players who could really take the club forward, and we knew that."
Rooney didn’t last long at Birmingham, and his criticism that the team was “a mess” is a curious one. Birmingham sat in sixth place in the EFL Championship when he took over in October 2023.
Birmingham had just two wins in its next 15 matches as it plummeted down the standings under Rooney’s tenure. He was fired by the team in January 2024, at which point the team was in 20th place.
Rooney is one of the greatest British soccer players of all time. He is Manchester United’s all-time leader in goals and is the second-leading scorer in the history of the English national team. The 38-year-old now works as a manager. He most recently worked as the manager of Plymouth Argyle of the EFL Championship.
While he wasn’t happy with the comments, Rooney stressed that he still has lots of respect for Brady as an athlete – before placing more blame on the state of the roster when he was there.
“Obviously I respect Tom Brady. He’s one of the greatest – if not the greatest – athletes of all time," Rooney said. “Birmingham do look like they’ve gotten it right now, which is good. I think they’ve done is get out the players they needed to get out.”
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