DATES VISITED THIS GROUND

24/3/2007 - England U21 3 Italy U21 3

My day at Wembley started with a rather unwelcoming ringing from my alarm at 5:45am, accompanied by getting into my car at 6am, then having to trudge 120something miles of motorway to New Barnet train station. Having parked there and spent about 40 minutes getting to Wembley via Kings Cross, Oxford Circus and Marylebone, I finally arrived outside Wembley Stadium.

Having spent time going to find my turnstile, I noticed a sign for "Stadium Shop" so I decided to go find it. About 20 minutes later I had walked around the whole stadium twice, unable to locate a supposedly easy-to-spot stadium shop. Having asked a steward it turned out the only shops are inside the actual ground itself, which only begged the question about why there were arrows pointing to a general stadium shop that didn't exist???

Having found absolutely nothing to do outside the ground, finally entering the turnstiles at around 10:30pm because of a small delay where it appeared oil was leaking out of one of the escalators. After ascending several staircases, I was forced to walk near enough around half the stadium to get to my seat. Surely it would have been more appropriate to have people entering turnstiles near to where there seats actually are?

Having found the block I was supposed to go in, and I was just stunned. I had gone into this day thinking that it would be overhyped and it would turn out to be nothing more than just another bowl.....I was quite wrong. It was absolutely huge, and the pictures you can see are the view from my seat, not even at the top of the top tier. It appeared that every seat offered a great view of the stadium, and unlike the Millennium Stadium this ground actually looked pleasing to the eye.

One thing I found absolutely delightful about the new stadium was the amount of leg space and general room between seats, even the fat cunts a few rows in front of me didn't have their rolls of flab touching each others, that's how much space there was.

The game got underway with the stadium only about half full. Despite having sold 60,000 tickets there must have only been 40,000 people there (I haven't seen the attendance at the time of writting this). All the empty space made it virtually impossible to create an atmosphere, this proved disappointing given the scale of the occasion.

Overall, I think Wembley is a fantastic stadium, but they certainly need to sort some things out, especially the fact that there's nothing to do outside the ground except walk-around, the nearest thing you could do is do your shopping at Asda. However, I will definitely want to come here again.

SCORES

Overall Ground Quality : 10

Ease of getting there : 4

Atmosphere : 2

Programme : 6

View of Action : 10

Leg Space : 10

The "football" feeling : 10

Friendliness of Locals : 7

Quality of the game : 2

Chances of Coming Here Again If Given Chance : 10

Overall : 71/100