A former sports minister hits back in the exchange of volleys over the naming of a footbridge at the new Wembley stadium. Read more...
I'd rather it was called the Jim Baxter Bridge than the Bobby Moore Bridge. Some people just can't see any further than London. Billy Wright captained England 90 times and was capped over 100 times too, but does Tony Banks remember him? I wonder how many caps Moore would've had if he'd lost 6 years of his career to the war. I also wonder why the "home" of English football is in London when the game was established in the Northwest and Midlands - the first London club didn't make it into the football league until after the turn of the century.
Well call it the Billy Wright , Sir Stanley Mathews or the Sir Tom Finney bridge. But not the Billy Baxter bridge its the English natinal stadium ffs.
I'm not really advocating the Jim Baxter Bridge, I just resent it being assumed that it should automatically be the Bobby Moore Bridge FFS. Matthews would be a good shout. Finney didn't win anything AFAIK, although that was down to his loyalty to Preston (a rare quality these days). Personally I'm biased towards Wright, but there must be dozens of equally valid ENGLISH footballing icons. Moore gets it by virtue of being Englands World Cup winning captain (which was a team effort if I recall) - hell, call it the Tofik Bakhramov Bridge (the "Russian" linesman - who was actually from Azerbaijan). Don't get me started on that one!! A national stadium in the Coventry or West Midlands area would make great sense - the centre of the country - as easy to get to from the north as from the south. I'm glad that we've recently had to use the Millenium Stadium for major finals - at least it's a pain in the arse for everyone to get to!! (nice stadium too).
I think the Midlands would be a fine area for a national stadium. North West is too much hassle to get to, although the football league was founded here.
It's only hassle if you're from the south and, although numerically dominated by NW teams, the inaugural Football League season included Villa, Wolves, West Brom and Notts County.
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