One Hundred Years of His Majesty Wembley

Once, there, it really was all countryside. The English countryside, intense green from rain and damp, messy and untouched. At least until 1792, when Richard Page, a large landowner, decided to transform his possessions in northwest London, County Middlesex, in a series of manicured gardens and woodland, so that the family home was no longer just a handsome building in the center of a pretty nowhere, but the heart of an aesthetically pleasing area. A self-taught specialist, Humphry Repton, took care of it and, after a while, the whole huge complex, ‘park’ in the modern sense, was called Wembley Park: derivation from the original name, Wemba Lea, ‘clearing of the Wemba family’, which later became Wembly which is, among other things, the only correct way to still pronounce stadium and district: the second ‘e’ of Wembley is only used by foreigners. Raised in popularity through Edward Watkin’s purchase of the complex in 1889president of the Metropolitan railway, who had transformed it into an amusement and recreation park by building a special station, precisely Wembley Park, and launching a massive advertising campaign to successfully attract families who wanted to escape, even if only for a few hours , to the chaos of London, the Wembley name entered football history some time later, thanks to its stadium.

Exactly on 28 April 1923, one hundred years ago, with the first event, the historic FA Cup final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United: there were apparently more than 300,000, more than double the official capacity of 125,000, the people who entered in any way – even the illegal ones – overflowing up to the sidelines, freed and then barely kept clear by some policemen on horseback including the famous George Scorey, known to history because his steed, Billie, gray, in the images of the time, seemed white and stood out more than the others, blacks. It was, despite the chaos and missed tragedy, the certification of the greatness of Wembley, which however was born in accidental circumstances and survived, later, for equally accidental reasons.

The birth had been caused by the British ambition to reaffirm, after the First World War and the first economic and political difficulties, the strength and wealth of the Empire: given the success of the Expos, the international fairs of objects, styles and innovations, it was thought of organizing an internal one, to reaffirm the imperial power, mend relations with possessions that tended to escape capture and give work to a few thousand veterans of the First World War who had struggled to reintegrate. Wembley Park had been chosen for the complex, and in addition to pavilions and buildings, many of which in a deliberately sumptuous style, it was thought to build a stadium. The organizers had seen how popular Crystal Palace had become, built on the site of the 1851 World Expo, with huge crowds attending the FA Cup finals from 1895 to 1914. Stamford Bridge had been somewhat less successful , built specifically to host the finals, and this convinced the organizers to try the feat. Wembley – officially Empire Stadium precisely because of the context in which it was conceived – was built in a very short time300 working days, with a massive use of reinforced concrete, externally decorated so as to actually make a layer of bricks appear, and painted white, to obtain an even greater effect, but it was already an anomalous construction at the time: a oval and not rectangular like the vast majority of English stadiums, also because it was designed by a studio that had never built a facility of the kind in its life.

This is why Wembley’s name and reputation has been something of a hoax from the outset: place of legendary matches and, for this reason, loved by many fans, but uncomfortable, with a partial view given by the distance of the stands from the field, increased by the decision to insert a dirt track. Commercial move: Wembley was a private stadium, which certainly could not support itself with a cup final and a handful of national team matches a year (with regularity only after 1945), and for this reason the owners decided to host the very popular greyhound races first, then speedway motorcycle races, rugby, concerts (remember Live Aid 1985?), horse competitions. The greyhounds even ran on the very evening of the cup final, which ended around 5 pm, and it was not uncommon for fans of the two teams to remain in the stadium, perhaps intending to celebrate the victory, or make up for the defeat, with a few bets. Little leaked of these details, abroad, where Wembley for a few decades was, together with the Maracana, the most famous and legendary stadium: a sort of stage that every footballer worthy of the name had to tread, a status increased by the 1966 World Cup, broadcast in a much higher number of countries than in the past, as well as the 1968 European Cup final, the one won by George Best’s Manchester United.

After all, playing at Wembley meant being an elite in itself: only finals, at club level, so the classic chant ‘we’re going to Wem-ber-ley’ was sung only by those going to play a trophy, and only important matches, for the national team. This is why the 1990s then represented a change of course: in 1991 it was decided to also host the semi-finals of the FA Cup and then Wembley lost some of its exclusive charm, because even those who were defeated in the semifinals and would be forgotten a few days later went there. Even in the rest of the world the fascination began to fade, due to a natural phenomenon: the expansion of knowledge and the first commentary had developed more support for individual teams than the clean and enveloping love for English football in itself, and a a fan of Milan or Berlin he would rather go to Highbury to see Arsenal or Old Trafford for United than make the pilgrimage to Wembley. Majestic stadium for the two famous domed towers, concession to imperial grandeur and homage to some buildings of the pastbut progressively out of fashion stadium even after the 1990 renovation, with the insertion of seats instead of bleachers and reduction of the capacity to 92,000.

The spectacle and conditions before the match, at halftime and at the end could be indecorous: given the insufficient capacity of the toilets, for example, it was easy to see dozens of people urinating on the walls of the first external fence. A troubled story, made more edifying by the veil of myth and legend, which ended with the sad last match on 7 October 2000, a 0-1 England-Germany draw in the rain, followed by the resignation of coach Kevin Keegan communicated in a changing room toilets. A story that could have ended almost immediately: the Expo closed in 1925 without the hoped-for regenerative effect on imperial morale, with the speech of King George VI (Elizabeth’s father) made famous by the film of the same name, the buildings and the stadium actually disappear, but were saved in curious and even tragic circumstances. At one point, under pressure from creditors, liquidator Jimmy White committed suicide, leaving his partner Arthur Elvinwhose bust has enthroned up to the end above one of the entrance doors, the task of destroying everything and selling the material for other constructions. Elvin, however, in extremis, in August 1927, found the financing to buy the whole stadium and resold it not even 24 hours later, with a tidy profit, to a consortium which, by introducing greyhound racing, was able to guarantee its survival . The cases of life.