Moving on...

IAN McLEAN takes an unemotional view of West Ham United’s switch from Upton Park to the London Stadium

photos.“The kids are the future,” he said. David Ginola swept into The Academy of Football ignoring all around him.

I didn’t marvel at the changing room. It was, to me, just a changing room. The players that day were David James, Sebastien Schemmel, Christian Dailly, Ian Pearce, Tomas Repka, Nigel Winterburn, Trevor Sinclair, Joey Cole,Vladimir Labant, Freddie Kanoute who was subbed for Jermain Defoe, and Paulo Di Canio.

I told Jermain Defoe I had been to school with his Dad, he laughed. Joey Cole, our favourite player, chatted to my son. Everyone was relaxed, maybe because Everton were going through a bad time.

The players were important, not the building they were in.

I played at Upton Park twice, once during a charity event to raise money for a Down’s Syndrome association and once when I was a football coach. Our club, Rippleway Newham, hired the club for a tournament and fund-raiser. I didn’t feel an urge to steal any turf or kiss it, for that matter.

When something becomes routine do you take it for granted? You fill your hip flask (sometimes vital when Jonathan Spector was named in the squad), get on the train, you go to the working men’s club, you have a few pints, banter with the lads, predict the team and the result, walk to the ground, buy a programme, get into the ground where now electronic turnstiles have replaced the manned version, march up the stairs, nip into the toilets that always smell of piss and sometimes the illicit waft of tobacco that rises from a cubicle.

You buy a pie which often makes your stomach gurgle and gives you a desire to re-visit the toilet and perhaps go into one of said cubicles.

You get to your seat and enjoy the game - only if it’s a win or a great performance.

When we played badly, and there were many such occasions, you would get more atmosphere on the moon, but when we played well and the crowd was in full voice “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” bellowed out by every man, woman and child, that is when you realised what a glorious place Upton Park was.

Was it the building, the fans or the players - or a combination of all these?

Upton Park, to me, became just a building. Sometimes I wish I had more emotion. My now ex-wife once said the more I became acquainted with anyone/anything, the more detached I became. My latest partner says I have a heart of stone.

Perhaps were it plucked out of my chest it would be pebble-sized and just as hard.

I have elicited opinions from friends that follow clubs who have also moved from old to new stadiums.

From a Gooner,“I have to say that the move has been like moving out of your family home, the place filled to the brim with memories, into a nicer gaff that has everything but doesn't feel like home. The biggest loser is the atmos-