With no international competition this summer, football’s curtain comes down with a clamorous abruptness in Athens on Wednesday, when Liverpool meet AC Milan in the final of the European Cup. By way of domestic overture, Chelsea play Manchester United this Saturday in the FA Cup final, and it would be fitting if a compelling show marked the return of the ancient fixture to its traditional home. Certainly each team has it in them to produce a memorable Wembley premiere.
The vicissitudes of Wembley’s construction and appalling overspend have provided a sorry saga; today’s relief at business resumed merges with a keen curiosity about the aura and ambience of English football’s reclaimed amphitheatre. The new Wembley was ‘more Canary Wharf than cathedral’, pronounced Tom Dart in the Times the other day, adding nicely that the unveiled building plays so dull, safe and solid that ‘it could have been designed by the architects firm McClaren & Eriksson Associates’.
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