Built in Birmingham: Tom Brady, the Blues, and the Soul of Local Football

For all the headlines about Brady, the true beating heart of Built in Birmingham lies in its fans.

Football documentaries are everywhere these days. From glossy global showcases to slick celebrity vehicles, they often end up more about branding than football. That’s why Amazon’s Built in Birmingham: Brady & the Blues took me by surprise. I pressed play with scepticism, but I was soon hooked. As a Walsall FC supporter, I know what it means to follow a club grounded in its community, and this series — for all its glitz and star power — gets to the heart of what football really means

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A Story Told From the Ground Up

What makes Built in Birmingham different is its honesty. It isn’t just a montage of slick training footage and Hollywood narration. It’s a warts-and-all profile of a football club wrestling with change, told through the voices of real Brummies: fans, players, and officials. It captures the raw, unpolished passion of people who live and breathe their club.

This is not a sugar-coated love letter designed to sell shirts in Asia or “build brand awareness” in America. Instead, it feels authentic. You can smell the sweat, hear the accents, and feel the pride. It is Birmingham, unvarnished.

Tom Brady and Tom Wagner: Saviours or Salesmen?

The presence of Tom Brady, the NFL icon, and Tom Wagner, the financier behind Knighthead Capital, is of course the big headline. At first glance, you’d be forgiven for assuming this is all about corporate marketing — celebrity stardust sprinkled on a Championship club. But watch closely, and something else emerges.

Yes, they are polished operators who could talk their way through any investor meeting. Yes, they know the value of a good story. But they also come across as men who genuinely want to invest in Birmingham City and the city itself. This isn’t their first rodeo, and while they can certainly talk, they also seem prepared to listen.

That’s rare. Too many football investors treat clubs as cash cows: extract the value, plaster over the cracks, and then move on when the numbers no longer stack up. Extraction capitalism — plundering, pillaging and moving on like a band of modern-day Vikings — has been the curse of too many clubs.

But Brady and Wagner feel different. They recognise that football clubs are not just balance sheets. They are civic assets. They embody history, community, and local pride.

Walsall FC: A Model of Local Commitment

As a Saddler, I can’t help but draw a parallel with my own club. Walsall’s American ownership might not be fronted by a rock star athlete, but they too have grasped the same truth: clubs only thrive when they remain anchored in their communities.

Our owners are doing a great job — a quietly great job. They haven’t come to strip-mine the club or the town. Instead, they’ve respected its history, invested with care, and kept the focus on supporters and the local economy. It’s refreshing, in fact. In an era when too many owners treat clubs like disposable assets, it matters that Walsall’s owners and Birmingham’s new American backers seem to recognise the value of continuity, heritage, and local commitment.

This is not extraction capitalism. This is a recognition that football, at its best, is about people, place, and identity.

The Real Star: Keith “Cuddles” Batchelor

For all the headlines about Brady, the true beating heart of Built in Birmingham lies in its fans. And no one embodies that better than Keith Batchelor — affectionately known as “Cuddles.”

Keith has been a Blue Nose for more than half a century. The documentary doesn’t shy away from his past. It acknowledges his role in the early Zulus, the notorious gang that became synonymous with Birmingham City in the 1970s and 80s. Yet crucially, it doesn’t sensationalise either.

Because Keith’s story, like Birmingham’s, is about transformation. Today he is a respected businessman, running a successful hospitality and security company that has kept Brummies safe on nights out for decades. Among working-class Birmingham he’s seen as a straight-talking, no-nonsense figure — known for his loyalty and his honesty.

The Zulus, meanwhile, are far more likely these days to be spotted organising charity events than punch-ups. Violence was part of the culture of its era, but it no longer defines them.

What’s striking is how Brady sees Keith. From an American perspective, Keith isn’t reduced to his past. Instead, Brady recognises him as what he is now: a self-made businessman, operating in a tough industry and doing it successfully. He sees the honest Blue Nose in front of him, not just the headlines of old. And that, for me, is one of the most refreshing elements of the whole series.

Birmingham on Screen

What the series achieves brilliantly is to put Brummies front and centre. You see the passion, the humour, the frustration, and the resilience. This is a club that has seen it all — highs and lows, triumph and turmoil — and yet the fans remain unshakable.

Critics have sneered, as they always do with working-class culture. They call it lightweight, or crass, or shallow. But when has the mainstream media ever celebrated the grit and graft of the terraces? The same critics will write glowing pieces about boutique owners in Notting Hill, but they turn up their noses when real people in real cities tell their stories.

Even Villa fans, if they’re honest, will probably watch it. Publicly they’ll sneer, privately they’ll binge. Because this is Birmingham in all its grit and glory. And whatever your colours, that makes for compelling viewing.

Why It Matters

For me, Built in Birmingham works because it bridges worlds. It takes a global sports celebrity in Tom Brady and plants him in Small Heath. It pairs an American financier with a Brummie superfan known as Cuddles. It places big money alongside real people. And instead of feeling false, it feels oddly right.