If At First You Don’t Succeed …

Obtaining tickets to tonight’s England V Brazil was no easy feat. Unless you were already a paying englandfan you were not guaranteed a ticket. Therefore the first stage of the process was registering with the FA and obtaining a FAN (FA number) for everyone interested in seeing the match. Armed with everyone’s FAN (one person could but on behalf of four FANs) you then entered a public lottery for tickets. Chances of getting tickets through this method were fairly low and we didn’t win.

Luckily for us there were resale tickets which involved either calling up or logging on to the website. Kind of like getting Glastonbury tickets in a way. I had all four of us (Jules, Fatkins, Sandra and I) trying to get through on the morning of the sale. Getting through on the phone lines was a joke and when I logged on to try and get tickets I found that I was about 1,200 in a queue of about 4,800 with a 14 hour wait! I thought we had no chance. Luckily Jules somehow managed to get through and we ended up with some very good seats.

Getting to Wembley

With over 90,000 expected to make there way to Wembley we knew it wasn’t going to be easy getting to Wembley so with this in mind we made sure to leave plenty of time to get there. It didn’t really take all that long to get there but the journey itself was very uncomfortable with a severely overcrowded and hot tube ride to Wembley Park. Crowd energies were very high though and in our carriage we had our fair share of entertainment by some tipsy supports. The funniest moments were when the in the minority Brazillian supporters joined us. Although there was a lot of heckling it was all done in good nature though I’m sure the fact that the Brazillians were mainly young hot Brazillian girls didn’t hurt any! Here is some video footage:

Wembley Park is probably the best tube to come out of in terms of impact because you are immediately greeted with the sight of the Wembley arch and the throngs of supports lining the walk up the stadium, Wembley Way.

With plenty of ticket touts, souvenir sellers, and police (included mounted ones – yay though the horses were clearly leaving their mark all over the place), supporters in very high spirits and even dogs dressed up in English gear the walk up to the stadium is a lot of fun.

The Game

Seeing the players come out on to the field for this first international match at the new Wembley Stadium was pretty exciting. Even as a friendly I guess this is the biggest football match I’ve seen to date, though that is of course not to discount the quality of the Fulham v Boro matches I’ve been to. 🙂

I’m glad that Beckham was back in the England team. For all the negative press he has received you have to admit that the news of him coming back to the team probably sparked a bit of inspiration in his fellow players. His impact during the game was noticeable and even though he didn’t win the man of the match (taken by Liverpool’s Stevie Gerrard) his free kick taking seemed pretty good and contributed to the one England goal.

The atmosphere during the game was pretty high but there was only one successful mexican wave for the whole night (noticeably dying out when it reached the “posh” part of the stadium.) Wembley is a huge stadium but the acoustics seemed built right with the echoes of everyone cheering reverberating around the stadium. For all the chanting and cheering by the English, given that the Brazilians were maybe a 1/80th of the stadium, I’m afraid that the English were a little out-cheered! But I guess that’s what its generally like with away supporters.

There was a bit of drama in our section of the stadium about 15 minutes from the end of the first half which seemed to quiet everyone down a bit from their cheering. A man had collapsed and at first I thought he had simply passed out from some sort of anxiety attack but then for some reason we were all made to stand (I still don’t know why.) The gossip that filtered through was that the man had died. I’m not sure how true it was but eventually he was stretchered out of the stadium. Some people were even walking out crying. The match continued on though.

I was really hoping that England would maintain its 1-0 lead to the finish but it was not to be and disappointingly Brazil scored in the extra injury time. The final result: England 1 – Brazil 1. A shame that the match ended with this draw.

Getting home from Wembley

Getting home from Wembley was an adventure all on its own. There are a few options with about three tube stops and overland trains heading north (away from London) and south (towards London.)

One of us, who shall remain nameless, had the bright idea that by going north it would be quicker to make it home south. Not the best decision it turns out! Surprisingly more people took the option of taking the train north than south including us. The lines were pretty well organised and handled and it wasn’t too much of a mad rush to get on to the trains although the ones heading north were sufficiently crowded. We were lucky to be at the front of the line and therefore able to grab seats.

The funniest story of our travel was Jules journey home. He was the first to get on the train and it should have been a quick 10-15 minute train journey (as opposed to what was in the end over an hour at least for me). Unfortunately he got on the wrong train and he ended up in the country somewhere with trains running back in the right direction only every half hour! And he was so smug getting on to his train too …. 🙂

More photos here.