Tuesday 9 March 2010

Wandering down Wembley Way – an article by Tim Rickard

A review of Wembley stadium through the eyes of Tim Rickard, a lifelong Stockport County supporter with unparalleled experience of football stadia across the UK.

“Off the pitch” observations after the recent friendly vs. Egypt.

For lots of people, the game of football is only one part of the match day experience. The surrounding amenities to the stadium and atmosphere once inside it are sometimes as important. I paid my third visit to the recently finished Wembley on Wednesday to watch the England vs. Egypt international friendly.

It certainly looks the part. You’d it expect it to, given that it is the most expensive stadium ever built on planet Earth. But certainly aesthetically, you get a lot for your money. 90 000 seats all offering a decent view for a start. One of the biggest drawbacks of the previous, now demolished stadium, was that you always felt a bit far from the pitch. If you were up in the Gods, then you really did feel it, exiled by a whopping great athletics track and then some. There can be no doubting that the arch looks terrific. And unique. This isn’t simply an enlarged version of the Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster or any other generic 21st century Lego bowl devoid of any design or artistic licence. Under the floodlights, the stadium really dazzles majestically across West London and once inside every spectator feels reasonably close to the pitch despite the fact that you are there with the equivalent of Jersey’s entire population. But the good points are starting to dry up. Fast.

Plenty of negatives though. On Wednesday night (i.e. a typical match day when Wembley is close to capacity ), the queues inside for everything were simply outrageous. If you wanted a burger, then not only did you have to pay a staggering £6 for the privilege but you also had the displeasure of queuing for what felt like half a mile. Never mind the wait itself. Beer is £4 a pint for pissy, watered down Carlsberg. If Carlsberg did shit beer (which it does) then it would surely be the shittest beer in the world. I digress.

The transport facilities around the ground are terrible. It takes a good 30-40 minutes to leave the stadium and walk the short distance to Wembley Park tube station. There are simply too many people clogging one street . This presents a real problem for anybody rushing to leave the stadium. So much so, that by the 85th minute on Wednesday, the stadium had half emptied because people did not want to be stuck in an immovable human traffic jam down Wembley way. Which they still were. More thought needed to be placed into this when the stadium was designed. There is certainly demand for an extra tube station or tramlink to ease this staggering congestion.

The toilets are quite flashy and there are a significant number of them. But who goes to the football for plush hand-dryers and actual soap or even taps that actually work? Some of my greatest experiences as a football fan have been in stadia such as Edgar Street and London Road where the toilets themselves look like they belong in a Cambodian hovel and you certainly wouldn‘t dream of expecting bog-roll.

It might seem a bit OTT to some that I am complaining about the presence of good facilities, but for me it is representative of a wider problem at the moment in football. It’s becoming an increasingly more sanitised experience. And this opinion was affirmed on Wednesday. The atmosphere was expectedly awful - this was an England friendly after all and at a stadium which currently does not yet feel like home to England fans. But there were too many decked out in jester hats with St George’s flag printed foam hands on display, clutching giant hot dogs, yearning for the half time entertainment and an opportunity to get their faces on the giant screens before beginning a Soccer AM style rendition of “Easy“ whenever England scored. Doesn’t really make the hair stand up on the back of your neck does it?

Most England fans are day trippers. No problem with that whatsoever. England do not play at home especially often, so it is perfectly excusable that when they do, people make the most of their experience at Wembley. But does one really need to constantly take snaps of just about every part of the stadium and the match itself. The players coming out of the tunnel. The seemingly now customary “myself in front of the crowd and pitch” shot. I wouldn’t mind, but it just seemed that every in direction you looked, this was happening. These photos were no doubt uploaded onto Facebook at the earliest opportunity. Does anybody else want to see these photos? I certainly don’t.

Another thing that particularly annoyed me was the haphazard segregation. Groups of Egypt fans were clustered in all ends of the stadium, aside from their own designated end, with flags and face paint chanting without a care in the world. Call me old fashioned, but an important part of the game for me is the territorial aspect. Fans should be segregated and if on the rare occasion that you are forced to sit in the opponent’s end, and your team scores, you should never ever dream of celebrating. This is a footballing covenant. It is more than etiquette. This was not observed on Wednesday. Can you imagine what stewards would be faced with if groups of German fans celebrated a German goal, during a world cup final against England at Wembley, in an English end of the stadium? When a small Oldham contingent decided to celebrate in the Cheadle End at Edgeley Park last season, the home end, they got a slap for their troubles. Not surprising is it? This needs addressing and tightening up at Wembley.

And finally, the announcer before the match encouraged everybody to clap their plastic hands distributed onto their seats to “create an atmosphere”. This doesn’t merit an explanation. But all I will say is: Twickenham.

I won’t be rushing back to Wembley for an England friendly.

3 comments:

  1. Thank you confirming for me everything that I thought already, thus saving me the expense and the trouble of actually going. The transport thing is very annoying, as I HATE leaving games early, and generally get annoyed with people doing so. However, I can understand it in the context of the experiences I have had at Wembley (the old one, admittedly). Ideally they would get the transport infastructure to such a level that people wouldn't have to make sure a choice, and I would have thought that for the money being spent on the stadium that would have been in the mind of those designing it.

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  2. A very amusing read, which perfectly captures all my inherent prejudices - well done sir!

    It's often hard to tread that line of calling yourself a ‘real fan’ but the whole Wembley match day experience, particularly for an England friendly has never been what appeals to me most about football. It’s about the very ‘real’ feeling that you can get from spending a cold Tuesday night against Bradford that sort of defies logic or reason. Everything surrounding an England game always seems so plastic and contrived in comparison, although I’m well aware at this point that I’m dangerously sounding like quite the footballing equivalent of a person who only listens to bands who play to audiences of 5 people and accuse people of ‘selling out’...

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  3. I've been to the new Wembley a couple of times and this perfectly encapsulates my own thoughts.

    It seems that the main motivation for the stadium was for it to look good on TV, particularly from those blimp shots you always get. In that respect, it's a success. In most others respects, it's not.

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