Football Days

Wembley Stadium

England 5-0 San Marino

12/10/12 - World Cup 2014 Qualifier

Att: 85,654

I've never been a big fan of England. I've only ever owned one England shirt which my Nan won in a raffle before the 2006 World Cup and before now I'd never seen an England international, although I did see the u21's beat Luxembourg at the Madejski Stadium about 12 years ago. While I'm not a big England fan I did want to visit Wembley and with the chances of Villa or Aldershot appearing in a Wembley final looking quite remote I accepted that an international was my best opportunity to do so. I had looked into the games against Belgium and Poland but with the cheapest available tickets costing £35 I knocked the idea on the head and judging by the attendances, so did a lot of people, but with tickets for this one at £25 I decided to take them up on the offer and the match was a sell out. Cheaper tickets - Bigger crowd. How about that eh?

I got the train to London, leaving at 15:30 on the fast train that stopped once at Woking and was due in at 16:00. It was a good journey as we sailed straight into London, going past Clapham Junction before we came to a standstill due to signalling problems. Fifty minutes later we rolled into London Waterloo, just after 5pm. I can't remember the last time I travelled to London with South West Trains and didn't experience a delay of some sort. To make matters worse I had no signal on my phone either so I couldn't inform my mate that I'd be late, so by the time I finally arrived at Wembley Park two hours after leaving Farnborough Main I wasn't in the best of moods.

It has to be said that the stadium is one hell of a sight from the top of the stairs as you come out of the station with the arch providing a focal point that I thought would be hard to replace after the twin towers were knocked down. After taking it all in we took a walk down Wembley Way and purchased a programme. It's at this point that I feel I must apologise to Tottenham Hotspur FC who I criticised in a recent visit for the price of their programme which I felt was a bit over-the-top at £3.50. With less pages and no real stand out content, programmes for a match between England and the lowest ranked team in the FIFA world rankings were £6. I have nothing more to really say on the matter.

After taking a few pictures of the impressive exterior of the stadium we headed towards The Torch pub where the rip off continued as I purchased two pints of Carlsberg, handed over a £10 note and received just £2 in change. Thankfully we were in good company in the beer garden outside (and drinking cans from the local shop for £1 each) so we ended up having a very enjoyable time. There were also some celebrity spots, as the badge man who tours the pubs in Aston on a match day was on international duty and that bell ringing knob from Portsmouth also made an appearance; complete with jester hat and cape. We finished our drinks and headed to the stadium with a loud speaker outside informing us that kick off was less than ten minutes away and that we must take our seats immediately. We went through the turnstiles and climbed a staircase of Newcastle proportions to our seats, making it into the ground with 50 seconds of the match played.

Once inside the ground it's difficult not to be impressed with the sheer scale of the place. It was finally re-opened in 2007 at a cost of over £750m and has a capacity of 90,000 which makes it the biggest stadium in Britain. Although we were very high up the steepness of the upper tier helped the view and it didn't feel as far away as I thought it would. Although the match was advertised as a sell out there were vast empty areas in the "Club Wembley" area meaning the crowd was around 4,500 under capacity, but the 85,654 in attendance still made it the highest attended match I've ever been to, even if you could hear a pin drop for the majority of the game. I'd rather that than listen to that bloody band though.

England's World Cup campaign got underway with an underwhelming draw at home to Ukraine although this match was a formality before it had even kicked off, with most bookies offering England at odds of 1/100 and as short as 16/1 to win by ten goals against a country that has a population of just 32,000 and has managed just one win in 114 internationals going into this match. The visitors' campaign began with a 6-0 defeat against Montenegro.

As expected, England dominated possession in the first half but they suffered an early blow when Theo Walcott was stretchered off following a collision with the goalkeeper. Despite having nearly all of the ball England struggled to create any clear cut chances and San Marino would have been very happy to get to to the half an hour mark with the scores still level. After twice hitting the woodwork England were awarded a penalty when the goalkeeper bought down Danny Welbeck. Captain for the evening Wayne Rooney stepped up and smashed the ball into the top corner and when Welbeck's skillful backheel made it 2-0 soon after it looked as if the floodgates would finally open. They didn't and the score was 2-0 at half time.

Wave after wave of England attacks continued as the second half got underway. More mis-firing and dogged defending kept the score at 2-0 and in the 65th minute the unthinkable happened as Danilo Rinaldi got behind England's backline. As he homed in on goal the Wembley crowd urged him on, but the pressure got to him and he hit his shot wide. His and San Marino's big chance had gone and five minutes later Wayne Rooney made it 3-0 before Welbeck scored again soon after. Five minutes after that another goal went in as Arsenal's Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain made it 5-0 and ended the Man Utd dominance on the score sheet. That proved to be the end of the scoring and the most one sided match I've ever seen mercifully came to an end, with England doing exactly what was expected without breaking sweat.

Something that I noticed in the stadium was the amount of people leaving with ten minutes to go. With such a dull game it's no real surprise but as we made our way towards the station the real reason for their early departure became apparent, as 80,000 people tried to get away at the same time. Thankfully the queue moved reasonably quickly and we were back at Waterloo in decent time before being made to wait for yet another delayed train, finally getting back to Farnborough about 1am.

It's hard to deny that Wembley is a superb stadium and many argue it was well worth the money spent on it. I can imagine it being a much better experience for a big club game and I remain uninspired by international matches, meaning I probably won't return to the stadium until Villa reach the cup final. I could be waiting a while...