I didn’t let Tom Wagner finish his sentence – Birmingham City is my dream job
Birmingham City might be American-owned and on their way to becoming a global organisation, but there is an undeniable Brummie influence behind-the-scenes.
Jeremy Dale, who was appointed interim chief executive when Garry Cook decided to step aside for ‘personal reasons’, carries on the Knighthead tradition of the Blues CEO being from Birmingham. That could change, but Dale, sitting in The Chairman’s Lounge at St Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park, looks at home.
A man who has travelled the globe and held positions in worldwide companies such as Motorola and Microsoft has finally landed his dream job. It could be until the end of the season, or longer, however long this dream lasts boyhood Bluenose Dale will serve dutifully.
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“Tom (Wagner) told me and I expressed disappointment at Garry resigning because Garry did great for this club,” says Dale. “He then asked me if I would like to become interim CEO and I don’t think he’d finished his sentence before I’d said yes. Then within 24 hours I’m renting an apartment in the city to make sure I’m here all the time.
“It’s a dream come true for me. It’s my club, I love the place. It’s just a privilege to be part of a team who are trying to transform it.”
Dale is an instrumental figure in the Knighthead story. He took ‘The Project’ to Tom Wagner and sold it to him. Eighteen months later and Blues are on the cusp of a return to the Championship with the promise of a Premier League push and a Sports Quarter in the offing.
Now, Dale’s love affair with Birmingham City has seen retirement placed on the backburner.
He adds: "I’ve always been involved to a great extent because when you love something you put the time in. I was doing an awful lot of work with the foundation and the strategic partnerships over the last few months.
"My wife would say to me, ‘You’re working harder now when you work part-time than you worked when you were full-time’. She said, ‘When are we going to have some fun?’, and I said ‘I already am!’
“She’s been fabulously supportive. She knows this is my dream to do this and I’m able to do it every day with the support of my family. She’s got very much into it. She’s been to a couple of away games but she prefers the seats!”
In his new role, Dale is one of the club’s voices and can’t escape questions on the Sports Quarter – a £3 billion plan to transform a 60-acre site in east Birmingham into a state-of-the-art stadium, training and academy facilities, plus entertainment spaces, offices and potentially a hotel. It is quite clear Wagner and his Knighthead colleagues are leading the Sports Quarter development, though.
You would think leaving St Andrew’s, which has been the club’s home for more than a century, would be a wrench for Dale more than most. But he isn’t a man for looking back.
“To be honest, yes and no,” Dale said when asked if he’ll be sad to leave the club’s current home. “Yes, this place has some fond memories for us all but you can’t look back. For me, in my career, everywhere I’ve been, it’s always about how do you create remarkable experiences? How do you create something memorable and exciting?
“And that often means you have to cannibalise what you’ve got and move on from the past. We’re at a time when we’re approaching our 150th year, for a fleeting moment we’ll glance back and look at it and the history and reflect on all the nostalgia, but I’m more interested in looking to the future and looking forward. There’s going to be far more joys in the future than there’s perhaps been in the past.”
