England vs. Israel- my take.

On Saturday I embraced my inner man, and went to see England take on Israel at Wembley.

I’m not going to pretend I know anything about football, but this seemed to me like a game which was so one sided at times I almost nodded off- sacrilege I know when the attendance was 90,000 odd very enthusiastic people and then me.

We arrived at Wembley entrance P, through the turnstiles, up two flights of rather sparkly escalators (no stairs in sight) where there was no pushing, shoving or even a hint of antsyness and into the carpeted area where we proceeded to take our seats in block 533. Shortly afterwards, the boys decided to go and find some beers and came back ashen faced proclaiming: ‘they aren’t selling any beer, at all, in the entire stadium’. Surely a foot balling travesty? I don’t know much, but I know a dry game is a dull game.

On a positive note, the stadium was awesome and probably captivated me more than the footballers. I spent most of time marvelling at the architecture and trying to work out how the roof shuts and asking Steve how HE thought the roof shuts, only to be met with eyes cast to heaven followed closely by stern glares. I unfortunately missed Michael Owens’ (apparently rather good) goal as at the time I was rummaging through my bag looking for my phone (or trying to find my lip gloss one or the other). There were no helpful replays, or large indexes to show me what number meant who, and I only worked out that Michael Owen was number 10 by the 88th minute.

The highlight of the game for me was when one of the Israeli players went down in a rather harsh tackle, and the physio came running onto the pitch with some kit of one kind or another- presumably a sponge and some cold water. The physio in question wasn’t as you’d expect, buff, toned and ‘body-is-a-temple-ish’ but rather very porky with larger breasts than mine. Much larger. Simply by running across the pitch he managed to rouse the crowd into a heartfelt rendition of ‘who ate all the pies’ and ‘you fat bastard, you fat bastard’. I laughed, and then I inwardly ticked myself off as I thought that having 40,000 odd people laughing in your face might not be very pleasant.

Shortly after this half time was upon us, and so was the rush to get ‘refreshments’. For me, this meant gazing in horror at the obscenely overpriced selection of crap on offer. Pie and a tea- £8, Sausage roll and a coke £6, sweaty pizza slice, £5. Even I could see this was not a good deal and so back to our seats for the 2nd half.

I don’t think I’ll ever truly get football. By the 80th minute, England were 3-0 up. A good thing you would think. But rather than bask in reflective glory at the surprisingly decent efforts of the team (given how infrequent this appears to be), or wait til the final whistle to give them a cheer, half the crowd were pegging it out of the stadium, like ants from a nest which has had boiling water poured into it.

Again, I asked Steve why they were doing this. He said to avoid getting caught up in the madness of trying to leave. All very well and good, but the 15 minutes you stand to miss including injury time, probably equates to something like £8 per person based on ticket price. What a waste of money. Why rave about ‘supporting your country’ when you can’t even stomach some moderate inconvenience and a minor queue. Pathetic I thought as we sat until the final whistle was blown

What a stupid mistake.

Turns out the ‘premature leavers’ had a very good point and after 45 minutes of queuing for a train, I rather wished we’d abandoned ship around the 80th minute. Rather strangely (and no doubt due to time elapsed since last alcoholic intake) the crowd were sedate and quiet, shuffling along, talking quietly, not so much as a cheer. Is this what has become of the football fans? At one point the queue passed by a road-digger and I even said to Steve ‘I wish someone would drunkenly try and climb on that and drive it’….did they? No.

Apparently my ticket stub could be flogged on eBay for a tenner… presumably for some geek’s scrapbook.

Next time I get offered tickets to go and see England play, I think I’ll be passing. I’d rather go to Wembley for something worthwhile, like a guided tour of how the roof closes. Now that’s something I’d like to know about.