"Wembley is quite simply the world’s most famous stadium. As we approach the new Millennium, we all look forward to many more years of the twin towers of Wembley." Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1998

"Quite frankly I’m more interested in the facilities inside the stadium and the football on the pitch, not in two great big concrete blocks." Tony Banks, Minister for Sports, 1999

The ‘Venue of Legends’. The ‘Greatest Stage’. The Empire Stadium at Wembley, in north-west London, has attracted countless romantic monikers during its seventy-six year reign as national stadium. As the home of not only the national team of the national sport, but also the final resting place of that most Holy of Grails, the planet’s oldest football competition, the F.A.Cup, Wembley has long been ingrained within the collective emotional heritage of the English. It’s famous twin white towers and that ‘hallowed turf’ are known and dreamt about the world over. It was the Brazilian Pele himself, possibly the greatest ever of all performers in the theatre of football, who called Wembley ‘the Church of Football’, regretting he had never fulfilled his lifelong dream of playing there himself. It is therefore very easy to get all misty-eyed and sentimental – luddite, even – as the old grandstand stares the bulldozers clear in the face and prepares to kick its final few balls into touch. Its inevitable redevelopment by the English National stadium Trust and funded by National Lottery Grants will transform it from an ageing grade two listed building to a World Class leisure facility fit to bid for World Cups and Olympics in the Twenty-first Century. Those responsible for the project have thus far not given away too many details on what exactly the shape of things to come will be, allowing worrying rumours to fly about the future of the twin towers themselves. According to the official magazine, the 126-feet high towers are, in keeping with Mr. Banks’ comments, ‘little more than glorified stairwells’, but admitting that ‘they are a symbol of national identity as powerful as Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey’. You can imagine the reaction if the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that owing to the great public interest in the Funeral of Princess Diana, Westminster Abbey needed to be revamped and rebuilt with Lottery Funds to accommodate the spectators’ needs! So what will happen to the towers that Brent Council will no doubt continue to utilise as their official public logo, and how important are they as signifiers of Wembley’s iconic status? If they are demolished, will we be left with just another modern steel-and-glass stadium, reminiscent more of shopping malls and the Millennium Dome, than the glories of past Olympiads, World Cup triumphs and far-reaching events such as Live Aid?

The story of the site begins several years before the stadium’s eventual erection, in the days when the Metropolitan Railway Company helped bring London’s urban sprawl ever closer to the quiet borough’s doorstep. (Incidentally, Wembley first appeared in official charters in 825AD as ‘Wemba Leah’. Over a thousand years later, singing football fans around the country – the ones who gave us the timeless ‘In-ger-land’ – would unwittingly resurrect the ancient name in their terrace chants as their team neared the cup final…). It was decided that the Wembley Park area was to be transformed into a pleasure ground, and an ambitious attempt to build a tower to rival Gustave Eiffel’s recent effort in Paris was begun. It was named ‘Watkin’s Folly’, after the Metropolitan’s chairman Sir Edward Watkin, who had bought the 280-acre site. The tower was indeed a folly – it never made it past the first floor, and construction was abandoned when the foundations subsided. However, both cricket and football had started to be regularly played in the park, and the site would have been turned into a racecourse were it not for Nineteenth century nimbies objecting to the attention such a thing would bring to the area. If only they could see it today! Still, sport remained; in 1912 a golf course was set up there, but the First World War proved to be a handicap to development. After the war, however, King George V chose Wembley Park as the ideal location for his pet project, the highly ambitious British Empire exhibition, which was intended to celebrate the wealth of cultural diversity within the British sphere of influence, as well as create jobs and advertise the country’s industry to a world hit by post-war hangover. This festival was to be held in the summers of 1924 and 1925, and the jewel in the Imperial crown was the £300,000 Imperial Stadium. Designed by Sir John Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, and built by Sir Robert McAlpine and sons, it was ‘a monument to the possibilities of ferro-concrete,’ and ‘reminiscent of McAlpine’s trademark railway viaducts.’

As a place of performance the football stadium has long been awe-inspiring, especially as most adult supporters have memories of their first trips to see their teams as children, when the world was big and bright. The sheer immensity of the occasion, seeing all those thousands of people and hearing all those thousands of voices in an exciting mixture of unison and rivalry.. The passions aroused by watching a piece of non-scripted performance geared only toward the simple story and not by any Brechtian ideal about making the spectator think about the injustice of the world, beyond that of Arsenal’s offside goal. I remember clearly my first visit to Wembley for the 1987 F.A.Cup final. My team lost, but being part of the hurricane is a sensation I will never forget A great atmosphere can make for a memorable occasion, in the same way as hostile atmospheres have all too often in the past made for occasions rather forgotten, namely of the type that occurred at Lansdowne Road in Dublin in April of 1995, when the authorities mistakenly put a section of England fans in the tier above a family section of Irish fans. The more aggressive element of the English support took this opportunity to launch missiles and abuse upon those below, resulting in the game being abandoned after the Irish had gone a goal up. This mis-hap was the result of the authorities not foreseeing any danger in placing opposing fans directly above one another, despite the hard lessons the sport has learned over the years. The logistics of crowd control has been an important element in Wembley’s own development since it’s opening Saturday, the 1923 F.A.Cup final tie between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United, a match known by history as the ‘white horse final’.

On that day, 300,000 people, many simply curious to find out what this new stadium had in store, embarked upon Wembley Park. The capacity of the ground was 125,000, yet almost double that amount managed to squeeze in to watch the match. It immediately won Wembley world fame. As the Daily Mail reported that day, ‘The official organisation went like feathers in a wind. Stewards and officials seemed to know nothing. They were useless. Dozens of people got in who had no right to be there at all.’ The kick-off was delayed by forty minutes, as over 900 people were injured. Police were called in from all over the capital, and eventually the pitch was cleared by mounted officers, the most famous of whom was PC George Scorey and his white horse Billy, who became a national celebrity thereafter for helping avert what could have been an unthinkable catastrophe. Thus Wembley was christened.

For the next sixty years safety at English football grounds underwent a series of amendments which changed the spatial dialectic within them. It was traditional for the fans to be close to the pitch, a feature which remains in English football today, notably at places such as Highbury, White Hart Lane, and Elland Road in Leeds. This led to an intimidating atmosphere for players from opposing teams to perform under. Wembley however was designed with a distinctive space, which is used as a greyhound racing track today, between the performance area and the audience area. This I believe contributed to that special grand ‘Wembley feel’. As former Liverpool striker Ian Rush, who holds the record for the most amount of F.A.Cup goals scored at Wembley, commented, ‘Playing at Wembley is like playing nowhere else. It is always a special occasion.’ However, the intimacy of terraced English grounds bred a new more violent kind of passion in hooliganism, and when pitch invasions, which had been commonplace for decades (one famously thinks back to the 1966 World Cup Final at Wembley and Kenneth Wolstenholme’s legendary if much over-used and clichéd commentary, ‘some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over…it is now!’) started to turn more violent in the mid-seventies, the fences went up. This succeeded in keeping the players safe from the louts, but changed the dialectic between them and the supporters for a long time. This coincided with players’ wages beginning their uncontrollable spiral into orbit, which is something that looks unlikely to change today. The gulf between player and audience was widening even on social levels, as well as physically within the grounds. On the terraces meanwhile the violence flared; horrific scenes such as those witnessed at the European Cup Final at Heysel, Belgium, in 1985 between supporters of Italians Juventus and English club Liverpool scarred the English game so much that its clubs were eventually banned from participating in European competition. The traditional annual end of season Wembley showpiece between England and Scotland was forced to be cancelled after over a hundred years of the fixture because crowd violence could not be controlled. The relationship between the football theatre audience and their stewards, the police widened further, and this directly led to the unthinkable catastrophe becoming the preventable tragedy at Hillsborough in 1989. In an F.A.Cup semi-final, police could not control adequately the crowd of supporters outside the ground and simply opened the floodgates, pouring thousands of people onto the same terrace. Unlike in 1923, however, there was no way for fans to spill onto the pitch, because blocking their way was a high impenetrable cast-iron fence designed to keep people in. That afternoon 96 people died. One of those victims was the mother of a schoolfriend of mine. A day earlier he had told me of how excited he was about going to Wembley for the final.

Hillsborough, and the report into safety at football stadia by Lord Justice Taylor which followed, changed English football ground architecture forever. The fences came down immediately, and stewarding and policing methods were revised and completely overhauled. In a way, the disaster served to unite fans and players alike, two parties in the Saturday afternoon equation that had grown steadily apart for long enough. Within a matter of seasons all top flight clubs were equipped by law with all-seater grounds, wiping the traditional terrace off the face of senior football in England forever. The obvious knock-on effects were reduced ground capacities – this hit owners of football stadia financially not only in cost of seating but also in lost ticket revenue. All too quickly prices went up astronomically. Yet an element of safety had been reintroduced into English football, and that attracted fans back into grounds which were once deemed unsafe. I would say that it is in particular a testament to the improved conditions and controls at Wembley that there has not been a serious incident at that stadium for over a decade.

Yet for many fans Wembley – or any stadium – will never quite have the same passion-charged atmosphere as in the days of the terraces. Certainly attendances for b-list England international matches have been low for a long time because of the sheer size of the ground – if it is half empty, and you cannot lose your inhibitions and sing as much as when you were made to stand, it is not worth going. I went to one of the finals of one of the contrived (and short-lived) cup competitions, the Simod Cup, in 1989. It was a year before the first all-seated F.A.Cup final there. As what would be termed a ‘Mickey Mouse’ cup, set up solely ‘on the assumption that money could be made by affording even the obscurest of tournaments the prestige of a Wembley cup final’, there was not a great attendance. It was only a fortnight after Hillsborough, and one of the competing teams that day, Nottingham Forest, had been witness to the tragedy. Still, after having seen a colourful and vibrant F.A.Cup final packed with eager and anticipant fans only two years previous, it was a substantial let down to see this great stadium limping through a match of no real importance but to pay the groundsman.

An important aspect of how all stadia are arranged is that they are all ‘in-the-round’, that is, the audience watches the performance from a 360 degree circumference. However, the nature of the game is that it is a ‘game of two halves’, as interviews with monosyllabic managers and players often inform us. In theatre-in-the-round one would be expected to have democracy of viewpoint, yet no supporter of the game really wants to sit behind the goal. Therefore these seats have always been cheaper. The more expensive ones have traditionally been those with a good view of either goal, from the sides of the pitch. It is interesting to look at Wembley, whose status as official National Stadium affords it the luxury of having a royal enclosure, to whom players from both sides must climb the fabled ‘thirty-nine steps’. The seats around the royal box are reserved for the VIPs and club directors. As Stephen Orgel said of James I’s Stuart court masques, ‘The closer one sat to the monarch the ‘better’ one’s place was, an index to one’s status…the theater thus became, in the most direct way, a political entity as well.’ But does their position qualify as the best seats in the house? If one thinks in terms of the modern game, yes. Fair enough, their seat may offer them an equal view of each goal, but fans slightly nearer will be able to see the goals more clearly, at least if there is any action in that particular area. If you are watching Manchester United take on Barnet, for example, and you are seated nearer the goal than the Queen, the chances are that for forty-five minutes at least you will have a better view, because it would be a one-sided match. Yet the Queen will always have the same view (and probably wishes Wembley had become a racecourse!), so what other factor is involved? Television cameras. They are traditionally placed opposite the dug-out where the manager sits with his coach and substitutes, and also tellingly opposite the royal box, offering the main viewing public, which these days more than ever constitutes television-and-armchair supporters, the best possible view of the monarch and the ‘important people’. It is in this stand that the politicians sit, the Tony Blairs and David Mellors. It is here that you will find, in the less regal settings of clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur, the rows of directors’ boxes. The seats of the West Stand at Tottenham’s White Hart Lane are not cheap. On my last visit there I noticed that for all the money spent on improving the ground nothing had been done about the decaying East Stand, which is where the cameras are based, yet the other three stands were spick and span, looking brand new – which of course they are. And in the middle of the screen sits the board of directors in their plush suites, acting out the role of Caesar to the script.

At Wembley, what the camera also catches, gloriously perched above the Queen, are Wembley’s famous twin domed towers. They are visible for miles around, and on sunny days are a beautiful sight to behold. No stadium exterior in the world seems to have the effect of Wembley. Fans tell their children of their memories of walking up Wembley Way. It’s not necessarily an easy place to reach. As early as the days when Wembley had just been chosen as the site of the Empire Exhibition Complex, it received criticism in the press, notably The Times, for being ‘some way out of London’. The more common argument today is that it is simply in London, therefore being more difficult for northern fans, traditionally the more loyal (football as a professional sport having originated in the working class areas of Northern cities). However, the fact that there is a special avenue leading to the gates of Babylon from the Underground Station directly up Wembley Hill give the supporter a sense of excitement and anticipation that simply isn’t the same when you’re walking up the High Road from Seven Sister station to find Tottenham’s ground hidden behind a row of kebab shops. Wembley stadium is surrounded by stairs that lead to it, and sloping car parks, as well as a rather ugly industrial estate that includes the Stadium’s sister arenas. It is the towers and the towers alone that signify that this place is special, this place saw many great victories, this place inspired sportsmen and women since the 1920s to succeed. That old sentimentalist Tony Blair summed it up, ‘It has a place in all our hearts. It is the one international stadium where every footballer wants to play.’ England were unbeaten by foreign opposition there until 1953, when the great Hungary side of Puskas destroyed the illusion of invincibility by six goals to three. That result had such far-reaching and long-lasting effects that there is even a bar in Budapest today which was renamed 6-3 in honour of this watershed in World football, Wembley means that much.

Which is why the demolition and redevelopment is causing such a panic. Everybody in England wants this country to host World Cups and Olympics, but the reality is that the great old monument is not getting any younger. It has had many facelifts and clean-ups, unlike it’s Brazilian sister the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro. The World’s largest stadium, it is markedly younger than Wembley, being built in 1950, but has fallen into such a state of disrepair that its future looks grim. As reported in World Soccer in October of 1994, ‘it is now an anachronism; patched up, outdated and facing an uncertain future after two fans died and 87 were injured during a Flamengo-Botafogo title match in July 1992.’ The MP for Brent North, Barry Gardiner, in a speech he made in September of 1998, highlighted the major reasons why Wembley as a whole, not just the stadium, must develop: ‘Wembley is quite simply outdated and it is not a fit place to be our national stadium as it stands at the moment. You have seen the slow, gradual steady decline of the area…If you come up (through Wembley Park station) it is like walking through a public urinal with white tiles and could as well be in the urinal. It is a disgrace to Brent, and to Wembley, it’s a disgrace to England.’

Very strong words, spoken even more passionately than those of any reminiscent footballer. So what is the future for Wembley as the nation’s foremost sporting place of performance? Details still have not been released as to how the new Stadium will look. It will drop the word ‘Empire’; perhaps a wise move in such a multi-cultural area as Wembley. That is open for debate. Those connected with the romantic nature of British sport will undoubtedly show undying compassion for the old concrete blocks, and I am perhaps one of them. We shall however see, in the coming months. The Rolling Stones will rock the Stadium for the last time this summer, before the JCBs transform the field of dreams into the new schoolboy’s Grail.