Wembley Stadium

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For the old stadium, see Wembley Stadium (1924). For the railway station, see Wembley Stadium railway station

Wembley
Location	London, England
Broke ground	2002
Opened	2007
Owner	The Football Association
Operator	Wembley National Stadium Limited
Surface	Grass
Construction cost	GBP£753 Million (2007)
Architect	Foster and Partners
Tenants
England national football team
Capacity
90,000 (Football, Rugby) 75,000 (Concerts) 60,000 (Athletics)

Wembley Stadium (often called "Wembley") is a football stadium in Wembley, London. The largest roof-covered football stadium in the world, it stands opposite Wembley Arena at grid reference TQ193854.

The previous Wembley Stadium (officially the Empire Stadium, but called Wembley due to its location) was arguably the world's most famous football stadium, being England's national stadium for football. In 2002, the original structure was demolished and construction began on the new stadium, originally intended to open in 2006. This was later delayed until early 2007. The final completion date of the stadium came on 9 March 2007, when the keys to the stadium were handed over to The Football Association.

The first match staged at the new stadium was the Under-21 international between England and Italy on March 24, 2007. The match ended up finishing 3-3 (The official attendance was 55,700, although a limited number of 60,000 tickets were all sold in advance). This now stands as the record for the largest Under 21 attendance ever. The first person to score at the New Wembley Stadium was Mark Bright, during a charity match on the Community Day on March 17. Richie Erwin, a local resident and winner of a competition to play in the Community Day match, was the person unfortunate enough to be defending Mark Bright when he scored this historic goal. The first footballer to score in a FIFA sanctioned match was Italian striker Giampaolo Pazzini after 28 seconds of the first game between England U21 and Italy U21. Pazzini went on to score twice in the second half of the match making him the first person to score a hat-trick at Wembley Stadium since Paul Scholes for England in 1999. This gives Pazzini two other records, the fastest goal scored at Wembley and the first person to score a hat-trick at the New Wembley. The first English player to score in a full-scale match was David Bentley with a free kick in the same game.

Contents 1 Construction 1.1 Structure 1.2 Pitch 1.3 Roof 1.4 Seating 2 Tenants 3 Music 4 Milestones 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Construction

Wembley was designed by architects HOK Sport and Foster and Partners, with engineers Mott MacDonald. It is the most expensive stadium ever built^[1] at a cost of £798 million^[1] and has the largest roof-covered seating capacity in the world.

The design of the stadium is an all-seated 90,000 capacity bowl stadium (unless it is athletics or concerts) protected from the elements by a sliding roof. The stadium's signature feature is a circular section lattice arch of 7m internal diameter with a 315m span, erected some 22° off true, and rising to 140m tall. It stands 140m above the pitch and supports all the weight of the north roof and 60% of the weight of the retractable roof on the southern side.^[2] According to "Guinness World Records 2006", the archway is the world's longest unsupported roof structure.

The stadium is linked to Wembley Park Station on the London Underground via Wembley Way, and Wembley Central via the White Horse Bridge. It also has a rail link - provided by the Wembley Stadium railway station - to London Marylebone and Birmingham, but whether this becomes operational is down to the discretion of the station operator (Chiltern Railways).A "platform system" has also been designed to convert the stadium for athletics use, but its use decreases the stadium's capacity to approximately 60,000. Instead of the 39 steps needed to be climbed to enter the Royal Box and collect a trophy, there are now 107.^[3]

The initial plan for the reconstruction of Wembley was for demolition to begin before Christmas 2000, and for the new stadium to be completed some time during 2003, but this work was delayed by a succession of financial and legal difficulties. It was scheduled to open on 13 May 2006, with the first game being that year's FA Cup Final. However, worries were expressed as to whether the stadium would actually be completed on time.^[4] The new stadium was completed and handed over to the FA on 9 March 2007, with the total cost of the project (including local transport infrastructure redevelopment and the cost of financing) estimated to be £1000m.

In October 2005, Sports Minister Richard Caborn announced: "They say the Cup Final will be there, barring six feet of snow or something like that". However in December 2005, the builders admitted that there was a "material risk" that the stadium might not be ready in time for the Cup Final^[5] and in February 2006, these worries were confirmed by the FA moving the game to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.

The delays started as far back as 2003. In December 2003, the constructors of the arch, subcontractors Cleveland Bridge, warned Multiplex about rising costs and a delay on the steel job of almost a year due to design changes which Multiplex rejected. Cleveland Bridge were removed from the project and replaced by Dutch firm Hollandia with all the attendant problems of starting over. On 20 March 2006, a steel rafter in the roof of the new development fell by a foot and a half, forcing 3,000 workers to evacuate the stadium and raising further doubts over the completion date which was already behind schedule.^[6] On 23 March 2006, sewers beneath the stadium buckled due to ground movement.^[7] GMB Union leader Steve Kelly said that the problem had been caused by the pipes not being properly laid, and that the repair would take months. A spokesman for developers Multiplex said that they did not believe this would "have any impact on the completion of the stadium", which was then scheduled to be completed on 31 March 2006.

On 30 March 2006, the developers announced that Wembley Stadium would not be ready until 2007.^[8] All competitions and concerts planned were to be moved to suitable locations. On 19 June 2006 it was announced that the turf had been laid. On 19 October 2006 it was announced that the venue was now set to open in early 2007 after the dispute between The Football Association and Multiplex had finally been settled. WNSL, a subsidiary of The Football Association, is expected to pay around £36m to Multiplex, as well as the amount of the original fixed-price contract. This should mean that Wembley Stadium will be ready for the 2007 FA Cup Final on 19 May 2007. The official Wembley Stadium website announced that the stadium would be open for public viewing for local residents of Brent on 3 March 2007, however the event was delayed by two weeks and instead happened on 17 March. The keys to the new Wembley stadium were finally handed over to the owners on 9 March 2007 ready to be open and used for upcoming FA Cup football matches, concerts and other events.

A short documentary of its redevelopment can be found on the Queen Live at Wembley 1986 DVD. The reconstruction of the stadium is part of the wider regeneration of Wembley.

The new Wembley is a significant part of the plan for the 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London; the stadium will be the site of several games in both the men's and women's football tournaments, with the finals planned to be held there.

The Race of Champions will also visit the stadium in December 2007.^[9]

Although not completed or opened at the time, EA Sports added Wembley Stadium into the video game FIFA 07.

[edit] Structure

• With 90,000 seats, the new Wembley is the largest stadium in the world with every seat under cover.^[10]
• The stadium contains 2,618 toilets, more than any other building in the world.^[11]
• The stadium has a circumference of 0.62 miles.^[12]
• At its peak, there were more than 3,500 construction workers on site.^[13]
• 4,000 separate piles form the foundations of the new stadium,^[12] the deepest of which is 115 feet.^[12]
• There are 35 miles of heavy-duty power cables in the stadium.^[12]
• 3 178 320 feet³ of concrete and 23,000 tons of steel were used in the construction of the new stadium.^[12]
• The total length of the escalators is 400 metres.^[12]
• Each of the two giant screens in the new stadium are the size of 600 domestic television sets.^[12]

[edit] Pitch

The new pitch is 13 feet lower than the previous pitch. The pitch size is 105 metres long and 68 metres wide, slightly narrower than the old Wembley^[14]

[edit] Roof

The new 7,000 ton roof covers an area of over 11 acres, four acres of which are moveable and rise to 170 feet above the pitch.^[12] With a span of 170 feet, the arch is the longest single span roof structure in the world and is 133 metres above the level of the external concourse.^[15]

[edit] Seating

There is more leg room in every seat than in the Royal Box in the old stadium.^[12]

[edit] Tenants

The English national football team will be a major tenant of Wembley Stadium. Given the ownership by The Football Association as of March 10, the FA Cup Final and League Cup final will move back to Wembley from Cardiff. Other showpiece football matches that were previously staged at Wembley, such as the Football League play-offs and the Football League Trophy final, will also return to the stadium. The League Cup final returns in 2008. Additionally, the Rugby League Challenge Cup final will return to Wembley Stadium beginning in 2007.

The stadium will also serve various purposes during the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The stadium will host the first regular season NFL game outside North America between the New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins, scheduled for October 28, 2007 with a 5 PM (UTC)/1 PM (US EDT) kickoff.

A Guinness Premiership doubler-header could be played at Wembley during the 2007-08 season.^[16] The London Irish/Wasps/Saracens/Harlequins game is usually held at Twickenham.

[edit] Music

Besides football, Wembley can be configured to hold many other events, particularly major concerts. In March 2007 it was confirmed the first music event at the newly opened stadium will be British singer George Michael, who will perform on June 9 and June 10, 2007.^[17] The following weekend will see Muse performing two concerts on 16 June and 17. Metallica have recently confirmed that they too will be performing at the stadium on July 8 as part of their 'Sick of the Studio '07' tour.^[18] The global movement concert Live Earth, modeled after the 1985 Live Aid concerts (one of which took place at the original Wembley Stadium) and the 2005 Live 8 concerts, is also planned to be held at Wembley on July 7, 2007.

[edit] Milestones

In order to obtain the licences the stadium needed to open, it first hosted two non-full capacity events.

• The first game was Geoff Thomas Foundation Charity XI and the Wembley Sponsors Allstars. The Geoff Thomas Foundation Charity XI won 2-0 (scorers Mark Bright and Simon Jordan).
• The first match involving professional players was England U21s vs Italy U21s, which finished 3-3.^[19]
• The first ever goalscorer was Giampaolo Pazzini.^[19]
• The first ever English goalscorer was David Bentley.^[19]
• The first ever hat-trick was scored by Giampaolo Pazzini.^[19]
  • The records above were all set in the England U21 vs Italy U21 match.
• The first ever FA Cup Final at the new Wembley will be on Saturday 19 May 2007.
• The first club game at the new Wembley will take place on Saturday 12 May 2007 when Kidderminster Harriers meet Stevenage Borough in the FA Trophy final. Kidderminster will then become the first team to play at both the old and new stadium. The game will have a capped capacity which is yet to be announced.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Inside the new Wembley
• Official site
• Description at sportsvenue-technology.com
• Wembley Stadium at FIFA.com
• Construction web cam
• Old Wembley Stadium @worldstadia.com
• New Wembley Stadium @worldstadia.com
• Satellite Photo of the New Wembley under construction
• Guardian newspaper History of Wembley
• Brent Council development plans
• Wembley trivia
• Virtual tour
• BBC report on an building delay/accident in March 2006
• Old Wembley Twin Towers Tribute
• Wembley Stadium Pictures on Flickr
• Sir J W Simpson, Architect
• BBC article

Coordinates: 51°33′21.07″N, 0°16′46.54″W

Preceded by Millennium Stadium Cardiff

FA Cup Final Venue 2007-

Succeeded by incumbent

Football in England v • d • e

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