Good riddance to Wembley
I am at a loss to understand the sudden
media veneration of Wembley stadium. It seems one can’t move for reams of newsprint
dedicated to the end of this alleged national monument. The airwaves are full of it, and
in particular Radio 5 has put aside any pretence of objectivity to hype to the heavens
this apparent end of era. I’m yet to be convinced that the public bothers half as
much as the media assume we do, but there you go.
Now, can anyone tell me what all this is about?
We are talking about the same thing here,
aren’t we? This is the demolition of an old football ground – and nothing more.
It’s not the end of an era. It isn’t a significant moment in the history of
football. This is not a symbol of something else. This is the overdue demise of a
miserable, primitive, unfriendly and badly sited football ground. That’s all.
Why then the sudden rush of Wembley memories?
Why the polls of greatest goals? You may note, as the nostalgia industry reaches a point
of frenzy, that all the memories being recycled are of elite occasions. It was all FA Cup
finals and England matches, didn’t you know? In none of the mounds of sentimental
bollocks that have been served before the public have I come across a mention of the
play-offs, for example. Yet surely those games, where one match determines the failure or
success of an entire season, and what level sides play at next season, have been among the
most dramatic and meaningful matches that the old dump has staged. Compare the heightened
emotions on those occasions with the parade of yawnsome FA Cup finals no longer taken
seriously by the big sides or the stupefying year after year of pointless England
friendlies. Similarly, nowhere do I hear of the last great people’s occasion at
Wembley, the 1988 Sherpa Van Final where two 4th division clubs, ourselves and
Wolves, brought the last 80,000 plus crowd the ground would ever see. You could vote for
your favourite Wembley goal in a Nationwide online poll – as long as it’s an
England or FA Cup final goal. You couldn’t, for example, vote for David Eyre’s
magnificent solo run and shot in 1994. Some goals count less than others, evidently. We
know that in football now only the elite counts, and this nostalgia-fest has been another
reminder. The premier league started immediately after the Matthews Final, didn’t it?
Wembley never was anything other than a quickly
and cheaply built short-term fix. It if was a monument to anything, it was expediency.
What thought processes went into the choice of location? Oh look, there’s a load of
spare land there – that’ll do. It’s great that they’re tearing the tip
down. Now that is cause for celebration. But one of Wembley’s many problems was where
it is – in Wembley. This grim suburb of north London is hard to get to from just
about anywhere. I can’t live more than a handful of miles away and even my route is
tortuous and slow. Clearly, building a new ground in the same place does not address these
problems. I know we’re told that some steps have been taken to improve public
transport access, but given the inadequacy of transport in this country, you can bet it
won’t be enough. One duff tube and you’re knackered. Some friends once spent
most of a night attempting to get home from one of Arsenal’s European games there,
and vowed never to return again. Far better to take as a starting point somewhere you know
people can reasonably get to and then build something there. It doesn’t look like
they’ve learned much from the Dome.
In fact, why take it out of London and build it
somewhere else, like the north west or the midlands, which were, if we’re getting
into history, after all the birthplace of the professional game, unlike London.
Wembley’s official name of the Empire Stadium is as anachronistic as the empire, and
as the notion that everything has to be in capital city of the empire. Other European
countries see fit to distribute their big projects throughout the regions, to encourage
and recognise the fact that they have more than one major city. How sad that the end
result of this will be one big ground in London. Indeed, why have a national stadium at
all? Everyone knows that other national teams move around the nation – because
they’re national, right? Doubtless, after a short period when they actually tour the
hotbeds of football support, England will return to new Wembley, and continue to play the
bulk of their games in north London, while claiming to represent the whole nation in doing
so. One consequence of this is that England becomes a sort of additional London club, with
a home support drawn disproportionately from the capital.
The problem with the sentimentality surrounding
the old Wembley is that is has made the perpetuation of these failings possible. By
talking up the magic of the decrepit old ground, we have ended up merely replacing the
structure and keeping all the other failings. And by the way, ever tried to go for a drink
around there? A desert.
Still, at least it’s good they’re
replacing the structure. It’s hard to get into words the damp, pissy awfulness of
Wembley. What a gloomy and depressing place it is, from the hucksters flogging shoddy
merchandise to kids who should know better on its perimeter to the almost amusingly bad
food on sale inside. Doubtless what will replace it will be top heavy with gleaming row on
row of corporate seats, any number of ‘Wembley experience’ packages aimed at
people who don’t pay for their own tickets and expensive food and fizz from
franchises, but at least there’s a fair chance of being able to see the sodding game
from your overpriced seat. New Wembley will continue to be a rip-off, but now it will be a
rip-off with a view of the match thrown in, so for that, be grateful. And they decided not
to put a running track in, and since these don’t belong in football grounds,
that’s another positive.
So, let’s look to the future with qualified
hope for something better, if not something as good as we might have had. And please, let
us not have any further romanticising of the Wembley legend. It was, frankly, a shithole,
and I’ll be happy not to go there again. White horses couldn’t have dragged me
to the last game – scheduled, as a final fitting ‘screw you’ to the rest of
English football, at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in the face of a league
programme – and I’d spend my money on Burnley and beer rather than waste it on
one of the thousands of ‘play at Wembley’ packages which have further cheapened
a tawdry institution and undermined the lofty claims of sentimentalists. I’ll go only
to dance on the rubble and check they really have knocked it down. I’m particularly
looking forward to seeing the ‘famous’ twin towers – oh, those Wembley
clichés come so easily – crumbling, as they possess no architectural merit
whatsoever. That’s a live broadcast I’d like to watch. The only competition
I’d enter is to be the one who presses the plunger, or wields the giant iron ball
from a crane. Let’s demolish as soon as we can, and at the same time put to bed all
who thought this was somehow good enough, and those who can’t think beyond the cheap
concoctions peddled by lazy journalists.
Shed no mawkish tears. Mourn not its passing. It
always was a better dog track than a football stadium. Besides, any ground where Burnley
only won one time out of four is clearly not worth celebrating. Good riddance.
Firmo
5th October 2000
