Since 1991 the FA Cup semi-finals have been held at Wembley. That’s 27 years of unfairness. As a Tottenham supporter this has brought a sharper focus to my thinking since Spurs were handed what amounts to a home draw in this year’s semi-final against Manchester United.
It’s impossible to argue otherwise. Like it or not, Wembley is a place where the Spurs players know every blade of grass. They have experienced just one league defeat here against Chelsea, another in the League Cup against West Ham and the stinging defeat to Juventus in the Champions League. They should really have won all three.
The team handed out a two-nil drubbing to United at the end of January and are short odds to repeat it again in April. Fair? How can it be? And who ever thought that Man United fans might grow sick of Wembley before the end of April?
Anyway, the thing is that holding the semi-finals at Wembley should be stopped. Before 1991 we witnessed fantastic semi-final ties at famous grounds like Villa Park, Hillsborough, Old Trafford and others.
The atmosphere was always electric mainly because thirty per-cent, or more of the crowd weren’t in attendance courtesy of a sponsor, or a guest of some corporation whose hospitality box was bigger than the average fans’ home! And when the whistle blew for the start of the second half thousands of fans weren’t more interested in getting whats on free champagne.
Officially: "The best goal *never* scored at Wembley Stadium"
— Bᴜʀɴʟᴇʏsᴛᴀᴛs | Dave Roberts (@DLRbrts) March 16, 2018
(@steve_d119 for Burnley v Stockport County in 1994)
Thankfully, the #Clarets were already 2-1 up!#twitterclarets #BurnleyFC
Extended highlights (full 13 minute video):
➡️https://t.co/qLYJXVJNu8 pic.twitter.com/NBAfdf4d0F
What’s so special about Wembley anyway if Spurs are using it as a home venue?
Moreover, semi-finals at these grounds reinforced the game as a game of the people in as much as neutral grounds were chosen as equidistant from the opposing teams. It was fair. This has long ceased to be the case.
This year Manchester United and Southampton fans will be forced to shell out for train tickets, petrol and maybe a hotel stay over. And if either or both teams get to the final, the fans will have to shell out all over again. Meanwhile for Tottenham and Chelsea fans a trip to Wembley is about as expensive as popping down to their nearest Tesco!
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The usual cry from the FA is that holding the semi-finals at Wembley means more people get to see their team. Of course this is nonsense and means nothing of the sort. The fact is, the new stadium has cost north of 700m and someone’s gotta pay.
What better way to raise cash than to hold the semi-finals at Wembley under the guise of pandering to the fans’ dream of seeing their team play at Wembley. If they could have gotten away with it, the FA would have liked to have held the quarter-finals there as well. I mean why stop at the semis?
But for my money, the semi-finals at Wembley just don’t feel as special as they once did. Years ago both halves of the stadium, from the halfway line to behind the goal, would be filled with the colours of the opposing teams. Not now.
What once was electrifying is now dormant
This once fantastic sight has shrunk as more and more tickets are directed away from fans and into the hands of sponsors and their friends. This is evidenced by the fact that twenty minutes into the second half hundreds of empty red seats remain unoccupied leaving parts of Wembley looking like the country’s largest McDonalds.
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I hear the arguments that the aforementioned grounds are no longer big enough to hold a, for example, Manchester United v Liverpool semi-final. But they are missing the point because the percentage allocation of tickets in real terms is no bigger at all now that the corporates have muscled in on the game.
Their friends don’t know their offside from their elbow and turn up for no other reason than to tick a major sporting event off of their bucket list. They have no allegiance to anything, except that is, to the free bar!