Wembley full of corporate idiots, abide with me and the national anthem totally spoilt, stupid music destroying any atmosphere the fans were trying to start, very few fans standing or singing, terrible atmosphere, terrible game. Is this really where football is going in England? Possibly the worst ever final......?
No before they came out but it was so loud it drowned out any noise the fans were trying to make. The 40,000 corporate fans at the game ruined any atmosphere. Wish the final was back at cardiff it was so much better. I think the english FA are only interested in the corporate fans and the rich ones who paid 90 quid a ticket. Fans evixted just for standing. Just a sad day in english football. It really is dying a death in england.
Shortly after the second half started I noticed there seemed to be sh*t loads of seats still empty. Just curious, was that a because of huge queues for the toilets or because the corporates were finishing there sandwiches in the posh Wemberley restaurants?
Those were the best seats, so all the free tickets given to the VIP's sat there. Disgracefull. Also outside the ground lots of fans buying flags and horns but were taken off them once they got in, some managed to keep them (usually very young kids) but 1000's of flags were taken from fans. Also cameras weren't allowed either. Jeezzz. Football in England ladies and gentlemen...you can stuff it.
get back to your 1970's hoolie books you sad 'student grant' imitator. Every thread you post is the same sh1te. i bet you look exactly like Harry Potter. Taxi for you.
Wembley actually looks great. Watching the match yesterday, I thought it is the best sport stadium in the world.
The problem was you had the two worst sets of support in England turn up, the sandwich munchers and the plastic blue and white chequered flag wavers, you could have replaced the corporates with more of these tossers and the atmosphere would probably have been worse. But yeah, who exactly decides that the teams coming out to 'banging' Euro house is a good idea, I half expected the chav fans to get the old light sticks out.
Please tell me that this part was a joke. Even after all that's been said, I don't want to believe they were stopping people taking flags into the cup final. If this is the way top level football is going there's a bit of me that's happy for my team to stay in the third division.
there weren't 40,000 corporate fans there. The FA has always only given about 25,000 to each competing club, even in the goods old days. There are corporate seats now, but the majority of those other seats were distributed around the regional FAs and clubs, just as they have always been. Now you may not like that system, but there's nothing new about it.
The way I understood it, there were 50,000 tickets given to the clubs, withvthe reminaing 40,000 being ditributed between the FA, it's sponsors and vasrious clubs etc. Personally I think it's a disgrace. The competing clubs should get 3/4 of the available tickets atleast. The way iot works now, anyone who works for the FA can get match tickets for them and their family, basically turning the FA Cup final into a big family picnic.
I don't know for definate but it was reported that there were 100's of stalls selling flags but once the fans got to the turnstiles lots were confiscated.
The fact that Wembley now has 'season tickets' pretty much means that English football as a whole is now a joke. For many games, the entire middle-tier will be empty, even if it's a sell out.
Point taken, but I would argue that of the 40,000 tickets sent to the various clubs around the country very few go to "ordinary" fans. For example several tickets will have been sent to Forest. I'm not aware of them ever having made them available for fans to buy. I don't know this, but I kind of assume they go to golfing friends of the chairman or such like.
To me it looks a soulless corporate entertainment centre, more airport terminal than football ground. Watching the match on the TV I got the feeling the atmosphere wasn't great. Difficult to tell on TV but Cardiff always seemed much louder. I was surprised how far the seats were away from the pitch, you could nearly fit a running track in there! The lack of atmosphere might have been the nature of the followers of the two clubs involved, though I doubt it, even now Man United fans are still a fairly noisy lot. It will be interesting to see what it's like at the play-off finals when, hopefully there will be far more proper fans. What summed it up was winners ceremony. The players now climb a vast wide staircase lined with security to keep the fans well away. What a stark contrast to the old Wembley. It's the way football in England is going, they're trying to design out the hooligan but in the process they're designing out, and pricing out the fans. What we're left with is corporate experiences and nice middle class families who want big events and who sit passively waiting to be entertained. To a lesser degree every new stadium is built on the same principles and I'm afraid it's ripping the heart out of the game.
For the money they spent on building this stadium, you'd think they could find a way to put the first row of seats somewhere in the vicinity of the playing pitch. I liked how during the pre-game, they were bragging how 25,000 double-decker buses would fit in the stadium, and other silly stats of that nature. As if that is a good thing. I'd be interested to hear from anybody who sat in the upper tier. Could they see any of the match at all without a telescope?
You are spot on mate. The premiership has been slowly eating itself to death these last few years and all you got now is are dull over rated over hyped and over paid bunch of teams who believe the crap that is thrown at them by sky and the bbc, and think they have the best league in the world.
I guess the english game has become a victim of its own success. Other leagues which are less high profile tend to have much cheaper tickets with the working class fan making up the majority of the crowd. Which tends to lead to a better atmosphere. I saw an article in the Times where a woman fan (from london) said that the FA Cup final is becoming as big a part of the social calender as Ascot, Henley, Wimbledon....oh dear.
You can see it, although it is strange to see it from such a distance (I saw the Vase final the previous week). Much more than I'm used to. The real problem from being up there is that you can't hear the game. Would prefer to be a lot lower down.
Part of the problem... And I am a big believer in this.... Is that football is being taken over by those people who would traditionallly not given it a second look. They used to believed football was a game for the scum of the earth and looked to rugby and cricket instead. It's why America rejected football so easily. The founding fathers and ruling elite rejected it just as the English aristocracy did. Now they see football as sophicticated and European and they ride rough shod over the traditional game. Well they can all f*ck off. No matter the money and the stadiums, It's our game, you can't take it.
This is complete and utter tosh. The English aristocracy were the driving force behind the codification of the game in the 19th century and also the best players in the years before professionalism. The FA Cup itself was based on the Harrow's inter-house football trophy. So to bemoan a move from its working class roots is ridiculous. The "founding fathers" didn't really have much of a chance to embrace the game either, given that it was not "invented" until 1863, more than half a century later.
The FA are now trying to clamp down on touts. Fair enough, but they're making it out like they're doing for the fans. What a bunch of knobs. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/fa_cup/6680845.stm
