Tobi Brown, a.k.a. TBJZL, or Tobi Lerone is a YouTuber based in the UK and is widely regarded as one of the OGs in the scene.
He is a founding member of the Sidemen – one of the biggest groups on YouTube which includes hugely successful members like KSI and Vikkstar.
Yesterday, it was announced that Tobi, along with his brothers, has been invited to take part in a training session by League Two team Crawley Town.
Although this is no Manchester United, this team is still a professional team, and training with them is a dream come true for many.
So who exactly is Tobi, why was he invited to take part in a training session and why is this a big deal?
Tobi was 11 when he started his YouTube journey.
He did this after he saw fellow classmate, and now fellow Sidemen member, Josh “Zerkaa” gain popularity off of the service.
He started by playing flight simulator games, following it with some Call Of Duty streams, before settling for the most popular game at that time – Fifa. With Fifa, his channel grew to heights he could not have imagined, and he kept pushing the content out to retain his fanbase.
In 2013, Tobi was one of the five members who came together to form the Sidemen group, which initially streamed GTA content.
As the success of the group grew, they started venturing into non-video game content, which included a large number of real-life football videos. These videos showcased the technical ability of Tobi, both in the outfield and in the goal.
Over the course of years, he amassed a large following.
4.87M on YouTube, 3.9 million on Instagram, 901K on TikTok and 482K on Twitter, the numbers are just staggering. Even his sub-channel on YouTube, called TBJZLPlays has 1.67M subscribers!
All this has resulted in Tobi having a net worth of a whopping $4 Million as per Bio Overview and $5 Million as per FreshersLIVE.
He got nicknamed “Black Goalie” owing to his good goalkeeping skills in the football videos and also won the title of the fastest YouTuber by beating other famous social media stars in a 100m sprint.
More recently, Sidemen hosted their third Annual Charity Match, which entails the Sidemen FC playing against YouTube All-Stars.
This time, the match was bigger than ever, racking up more than 2.5 Million concurrent viewers and raising over 1 Million GBP for charity.
In this game were present scouts from Crawley Town, who via a statement mentioned that they are looking for players to join their team for the first round of the FA Cup fixture.
Manager Kevin Betsy was fully in support of this idea and said that the club is actively looking to try something different.
He said, “The FA Cup is a historic competition that is incredibly meaningful to our club, our players and our fans, and we’re looking forward to doing everything we can to make a deep run this season. However, the unique rules of this competition give us a chance to try something different, and we’re looking forward to potentially welcoming some new faces to the team.
“It’s fairly unlikely that they’ll get on the pitch unless the game is already well in hand, but we’re excited to add some fresh blood to our training sessions and in the dugout — and hopefully bring some new fans to the club in the process.”
As is clear, the main idea behind this is to get new fans to start watching Crawley Town’s football. More viewers equate to more sponsors, and that means more money for the club.
Thus it is easy to see that scouts from the game have finally come to a decision, and have decided TBJZL or Tobi to feature for the team in the first round of the FA Cup.
He had 2 goals to add to his assist in the charity game, which was an incredible trivela assist to his brother, Manny Brown.
The beauty of the assist aside, the header from Manny was also incredible.
Alongside this goal, he had a very impressive showing, bagging a goal and assist coming off the bench, and making impressive runs down the wing. Manny arguably has the most experience out of all, as he regularly plays in the Sunday League for UnderTheRadar FC.
Manny Brown
With his stamina, speed, and agility, Crawley Town has seemingly decided to get him on board too.
Crawley Town invited Tobi’s third brother Jed Brown as well, to complete the trio. Jed is more lowkey than the other two Brown’s and rarely features on social media.
While Tobi and Manny do have some experience playing with the pros, as can be seen in their videos with Ben Foster, Raheem Sterling, Jose Fonte, and Arsenal Women’s Team, among others, the quality of play of pro players in official games and training sessions is a level above anything they have ever experienced.
Crawley Town plays Accrington Stanley in the first round of the FA Cup, and hopefully, we get to see at least one, if not more Brown brothers in action.
