100 YEARS OF WEMBLEY

As the Home of Football approaches its centenary, Keir Radnedge tells the story of one of the world's most iconic stadiums

- Keir Radnedge

It is too easy to describe Wembley simply as a football ground; that would be like calling St Peter’s Basilica a chapel. Wembley is more, far more: an aspiration, an inspiration. Its exclusivity may have been compromised by a debt-discounting flurry of play-offs and other end-of-season bric-a-brac, but out in the big wide world of football Wembley remains a castle on a hill.

Yet, for all that, England did not call it home until the late 1940s. No club ever made it their permanent home. Arsenal flirted only briefly with the idea while Tottenham Hotspur’s temporary tenancy lasted longer than they wanted. Greyhounds have seen more of Wembley than footballers. Speedway bikes chopped off the corners of the pitch while rugby codes, pop stars, boxers, evangelists, gridiron giants, stock car racers and, infamously, horse-riding showjumpers all take their turn. The Olympic Games, too: main venue in 1948 and summoned for duty again in 2012.

But it is the romance of football which has lifted Wembley to iconic status and, for all the sporting drama of the past century, it owes most to the FA Cup final and to the inaugural final above all. That opening event has been chaotically sealed in not merely the cold print of history books but in legend, in the soul of the game.

Wembley had been built not for football but for the Empire Exhibition of 1924. The Empire Stadium its original name was thrown together in 300 days at a cost of 750,000. A troop of soldiers tramped up and down the terracing to ensure it was safe to open only four days before the 1923 FA Cup final.

The FA Cup was already a wellestablished institution, 52 years old and counting. West Ham United and Bolton Wanderers provided appropriate rivals for the occasion: South v North, London v Lancashire, capital selfconfidence v regional pride.