Wembley matches will forever leave that empty feeling

The new Wembley stadium and the decisions made since and during its construction to recoup the £787 million outlayed by The Football Association have often come under fierce scrutiny. Aside from the money-spinning American Football matches, the “Man Vs Machine” event which saw Lewis Hamilton race Sir Chris Hoy and the much-disputed FA Cup semi-finals which are to be staged at Wembley leading to claims by the Manchester United and Everton managers, Sir Alex Ferguson and David Moyes, that the cup has been devalued; there is one major oversight that should have been addressed at the planning stage which looks set to spoil every match played at Wembley from now on.

The people who occupy the corporate seats or, as Roy Keane famously labelled them, the ‘prawn sandwich brigade’, left a bitter after-taste following England’s 4-0 win over Slovakia on Saturday but, sadly, it is something that doesn’t look like changing. Is it becoming fashionable to miss key moments in football history? If its not ITV replacing Dan Gosling’s extra-time winning goal for Everton against Liverpool in their FA Cup replay at Goodison Park with a Tic-Tac advert it’s the FA doing their best at putting as many disinterested cronies in the stadium as possible, at the expense of ‘real’ supporters.

David Beckham won his 109th cap for England against Slovakia, coming on as a half-time substitute and, in the process, surpassing Bobby Moore’s 108 caps - the record number of caps previously held for an outfield player – and you’d think, with the prospect of witnessing a historic event in English football, that fans would be queuing up to see this happen. How wrong we are.
But these people aren’t fans and, worse still, their seats are directly facing the gantry for the television cameras and so when Beckham stepped onto the Wembley turf, becoming the nation’s second most capped player ever for England, the stadium looked empty. So much so that you’d think it was an England Under -21 international, with no disrespect intended but to underline the appearance of emptiness in the stadium.

It is logical to expect there to be a section of seats for tickets allocated to the corporate sponsors of the England team and The FA but, as has been shown at a number of previous international matches at the new Wembley, these people clearly aren’t there for, what most would consider the sole purpose of Wembley, the football. They have no apparent desire to participate in the atmosphere, so why have we got to see their obvious lack of interest every time a bloody game is played there?

A simple bit of planning would have placed the corporate seats underneath the television cameras so that when fans, up and down the country, watching football either at home or in pubs tune in they see the appearance of a full stadium because the real, paying, fans are in their direct view rather than those who are willing to miss half a match because they’re mulling over the free-food on offer.
More alarmingly is that this problem is commented on every time there is a match of importance yet, unsurprisingly, nothing seems to be done. Surely a simple relocation of the corporate seat allocation out of the sight of the camera is both feasible and sensible.

For a country bidding to host the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cup, its hardly the best way in convincing the governing body of world football that we are a nation worthy of hosting the worlds biggest tournament when, on the surface, it looks as though our home stadium is a constant state of emptiness.