Wembley is football’s equivalent of a timeshare in Tenerife – and now we’re stuck with it
THE English obsession with home ownership cost us dearly again last week. We saved Wembley for the nation — whatever the hell that means — and ran Shahid Khan back to Jacksonville, or Fulham, with his tail between his legs. Well done us.
Let’s face it, for the amount we use it, Wembley is football’s version of a timeshare property in Tenerife. Nothing more. It’s presentable enough but it hasn’t got a lot of soul. We get to stay there briefly now and again and, every few months, Liverpool and Manchester United fans, down for a cup final in the capital, miss the last train home from Euston.
But now, we’re stuck with it. Khan offered us £ 600 million for our timeshare and, like lunatics, we turned him down. We told ourselves that our timeshare was actually a magnificent Grade I listed mansion in Mayfair and that we needed to keep hold of it for future generations when we should have taken the money and run.
We got lost in worthy discussions about society and the sustainability of quick fixes and whether we really ought to be taking cash from an American billionaire. As if his money were somehow dirtier than British money. And while we were wringing our hands, the deal died. And now we get t o pay for Wembley. And now we get to have more worthy arguments about who should provide the funding to resuscitate grassroots football. And while we dither, our pitches will sink deeper into the mire of our philosophising.
Austerity is forcing councils into the neglect of community assets but we had a chance to dig football out of the swamp. We didn’t take it. So it is today’s generation of young players who will turn up to play a match on a Sunday morning to be told their game is off.
It happens for months on end now and unless you know the excitement of turning up to play for your team, you cannot know the disappointment of discovering there will be no game. For some teams on some pitches, that means weeks, even months, without a game. It means a fallow winter.
T h e wi n d f a l l f r o m Kh a n ’s proposed purchase of Wembley mi g h t not have fixed that completely. But it would have helped.
The FA board, so often and so lazily maligned, actually wanted to transfer money from the top of the game to the bottom but it was prevented from doing so by the very people whose constituencies would have benefited most. It is, indeed, a funny old game. The preoccupation with the national game owning Wembley is absurd. You can have a great time at a holiday home without having the property deeds fading to sepia in a drawer upstairs.
Enjoy it for a few days here and there but let somebody else take the strain. That was what we were being offered by Khan. That was the deal we blew.
I’ve had a lot of great days and nights at Wembley. None of them have been dependent on who owned the stadium. I couldn’t tell you who owned it the first time I went there to see England beat Hungary in a World Cup qualifier in November 1981. I can tell you the England line- up that evening even now: Shilton, Neal, Mills, Thompson, Martin, Robson, Keegan, Coppell, Mariner, Brooking, McDermott.
And I can remember the thrill of being there at last. But the owner? I haven’t got a clue.
The same goes for seeing Norman Whiteside score the winner for Manchester United in the 1985 FA Cup final. No idea who the owner was. No idea who it was in 1966 when England won the World Cup.
I know t hat t he fi rst owner committed suicide. I know that it was bought then by Arthur Elvin, who had made much of his money from selling the rubble of buildings around what was then known at the Empire Stadium. Seems apt, that.
And yet now we tell ourselves it is important that it is owned by the FA. Why? It’s the National Treasure Syndrome. Like a l ot national treasures, Wembley’s worthless. The idea it can become a cash cow for the game is flawed. It is more likely to become a drain.
And so now, the deal with our timeshare is we have to live in it permanently. And the National Treasure brigade celebrate and say let’s raise the money by imposing a levy on agents’ fees. It’s a beautiful idea, I agree, but it’s pie in the sky.
So is the idea that the Premier League will be forced to contribute a far greater sum to grassroots football. Really? Good luck with getting that past the owners. These turkeys are way, way too fat to vote for Christmas.
We’ve made our decision. Now it’s time to repent at leisure as we stare at the decaying grassroots facilities all around us. We were presented with an opportunity to do something about it, an opportunity that would have cost us nothing at all. And we blew it.
IT HAS not been an auspicious year for Australian cricket. After the low of Sandpapergate in South Africa in March and the shaming of Steve Smith and David Warner, the Aussies fell to one of the heaviest defeats in their Test history last week when they lost by 373 runs to Pakistan in Dubai. It can only be a matter of time now until Australia say that at least they play the game the right way. Only then will we know that the world order is truly in chaos.