The Wembley ‘Pitch’

Alex Ferguson has waded into the ongoing debate about the quality of the surface at Wembley, allegedly removing Scholes, Berbatov and Evra from the starting eleven after seeing it cut up during Arsenal’s defeat to Chelsea (after which Arsene Wenger also complained about the laughable turf). This is not the first time it has come under the spotlight, either – remember England’s 3-2 defeat to Croatia on a soggy peat-bog?

Andrew Walker has already evaluated the wisdom/motivation behind holding the semis at Wembley at all.

It is nothing short of shambolic that such an expensive stadium, the frontal face of the English game, does not contain a top notch playing arena. As Arsene Wenger said:

It is not a pitch for a stadium like that. You spend all that money and still have no pitch.

Quite. And Ferguson’s two-penneth worth:

When I saw the pitch what I didn’t want was to go into extra time with my strongest squad… Yesterday it looked spongy and dead and difficult to move the ball quickly around it. So we had to go with the bold decision of playing the younger ones. They’ve got all these lights around the perimeter to help the growth and the standard of the soil but it looks dead to me.

The pitch has been relayed five times since the stadium finished construction in 2007. Despite the lights Ferguson mentioned, at no point has the surface been top quality – and that is far from helped by the proliferation of events the FA insist on holding there, from Rugby matches (just about acceptable) to concerts (always a problem for quality grass surfaces) and most ridiculously the ‘Race of Champions’ where the pitch was tarmacked over to allow racing drivers on it.

Were it not for these repeated disturbances and upheavals of the ground the pitch would now no doubt be a darn sight better than it is – so we have to blame the FA (or whoever is ultimately responsible for the budgeting/planning of the stadium). At best it is poorly thought out and badly managed, run on a budget made too tight by the astronomical building costs and forcing them to become event led prostitutes. At worse, it is pure avarice.

The turf is not scheduled to be relaid again until after the summer, by which time the three Football League play-offs, the FA Cup final and England’s World Cup qualifier with Andorra will have all been played at the stadium. If the divots and potholes after the FA Cup semi finals are anything to go by, we won’t hold our breaths for a footballing spectacle.

And how much of a farce, to have a £750m national football stadium that cannot host a decent game.