WEMBLEY IS ABOUT THE STUFF OF DREAMS...NOT THE MONEY
THE FA think it is about the colour of money. It isn’t. It is about the stuff of dreams. Specifically, the dreams of the very people the FA claim will benefit from the sale of Wembley. The grassroots. The children. The next generation, gambolling on their new 4G pitches, courtesy of the largesse of the billionaire Shahid Khan. How to put this, without sounding ungrateful? Nobody ever grew up dreaming of playing Slovenia in Watford on a Wednesday night. Nobody imagined the day they would one day face Costa Rica, in Leeds, on a Thursday. Wembley — that is the holy grail, still. It is the reason it is so often the venue of choice for UEFA finals, the reason foreign visitors
raise their game there in friendly matches, the reason so many football people fought so hard to retain the site when it had fallen into disrepair. It is English football’s heart and soul. So, no matter the deal, no matter its worth, if the national team is evicted from its home, it is a bad one. And by the Jacksonville Jaguars, no less. England will become nomads in autumn because Wembley Stadium will prioritise the NFL. Not since a Monster Trucks event ruined the pitch and England failed to reach the 2008 Euros on a rainy night against Croatia has there been such an ill-advised use of resources. Khan can make all the promises he wants, the FA can ask for every assurance: you can’t sell something and keep it. The day Wembley passes into private hands, the FA lose ownership of a most precious jewel. Those making the decision will argue the old Wembley was never theirs anyway. It was a greyhound track, it hosted speedway racing, the FA and the England team were merely its tenants. Yet that is the point. This changed with the rebuild. Finally, the link to the spiritual home of English football was made finite. The football men owned the world’s most iconic football stadium. The FA moved there. England managers named squads and made pronouncements in its auditoriums. It felt right in a way this does not. The FA should call the shots at Wembley, not the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars however benign he may appear at this delicate stage. As West Ham are finding some way across town, no longer having control of your ground contains all manner of unforeseen problems. Here’s a small one. As England tour the country in autumn, an obvious stopping point is Anfield. Great ground, Anfield. One of the greatest, in fact. England played the first competitive international of the Sven Goran Eriksson era there in 2001, and returned twice more during their years on the road while Wembley was under construction. Yet The Sun newspaper is now banned from Anfield; and from Goodison Park, too. So either the FA have to ban
The Sun from England internationals on Merseyside — which it almost certainly would not do — or avoid the area entirely. These complications do not happen when an institution owns its stadium. Now, there are more important matters than media accreditation, but imagine that tiny complication a hundred times over, in every aspect of match logistics. That is what it is like to cede authority. And no, some major football nations do not have a designated national stadium. Germany, for one. So that makes Wembley more special, not less. Not everything Germany does has to be slavishly adopted. Wembley isn’t perfect. No one pretends it is. The land around it has been short-sightedly sold off and it is slowly disappearing from view as new builds rise from its perimeter. But the name matters, what it has come to represent to generation after generation matters. Maybe it still will decades from now. Maybe aspiring athletes will dream of playing at Wembley — as a running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Pat yourselves on the back for that, everybody; or chest bumps, to fit the new national mood.