ESPN Network:
ESPN.com
ESPN Deportes
Fantasy Games
|
|
|
| Monday, September 30, 2002 19:19 EST |
New Wembley scheduled to open in 2006
[Reuters]
LONDON -- Demolition experts finally began
ripping the heart out of Wembley Stadium on Monday, turning one
of the world's most famous sporting landmarks into a pile of
dust and rubble.
With a new stadium set to rise in time for the 2006 FA Cup
final, the Twin Towers that have watched over so many of English
football's greatest moments are being torn down and consigned to
the history books.
However, the replacement of a venue which cost 750,000
pounds to build in the early 1920s by one costing more than 750
million, is only the latest chapter in a Wembley story that is
already 110 years old.
An unremarkable patch of land northwest of London first made
headlines in 1892 when the foundations were laid of what would
later be known as "Watkins Folly" -- a steel tower designed to
emulate, if not surpass, the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Edward Watkin, chairman of London's Metropolitan's Railway,
was ultimately to be disappointed as only the first stage was
ever completed and within a few years of its 1896 opening, the
tower had fallen into neglect, before later being demolished.
From the ashes, the Empire Stadium rose nearly 20 years
later as the centrepiece of the British Empire Exhibition,
opened by King George V in 1924.
Wembley Stadium had enjoyed a memorable opening in 1923
when it hosted Bolton Wanderers' 2-0 FA Cup final victory over
West Ham United in what became known as the "White Horse Final."
Organizers had hopelessly underestimated the crowds who
would flock to see the match and although the official
attendance is given as 126,947, the true figure is probably
closer to 200,000.
The match only went ahead because of an early exercise in
crowd control carried out almost single-handedly by policeman
George Scorey and his white horse Billie, who drove the crowds
back from the pitch and beyond the touchline.
Among the many epic finals to have brought in the fans, the
greatest was probably the "Matthews Final" of 1953 in which
Stanley Matthews wreaked havoc down the right wing.
His Blackpool team was 3-1 down to Bolton Wanderers with 22
minutes to go and trailing 3-2 with two minutes on the clock
before roaring back for a thrilling 4-3 victory -- Stan
Mortensen scoring a hat trick.
That same year, Wembley hosted probably England's most
numbing defeat in its footballing history when it was
outclassed by Ferenc Puskas' Hungary -- the "Marvellous Magyars"
-- in a 6-3 defeat at Wembley.
Thirteen years later, though, Wembley would host the
greatest ever moment for English football, when the World Cup
came to the country which invented the game.
Wembley hosted England's Group One games and its road to a
victorious 4-2 final over West Germany in which Geoff Hurst's
hat trick and a Russian linesman helped to make history.
Tofik Bakhramov won himself a place in English hearts when,
asked by Swiss referee Gottfried Dienst whether a Hurst
piledriver had crossed the line after it crashed off the
underside of the bar, replied in the affirmative.
It made the score 3-2 in extra time and Hurst put the result
beyond doubt with an unstoppable strike that nearly burst the
back of the West German net.
The Germans got plenty of revenge in the ensuing years, in
World Cups and European championships, including a 1-0 victory
over England in the last football match to be played at Wembley
Stadium, a World Cup qualifier in October 2000.
It has taken almost two years of political and commercial
wrangling for the final contracts to be signed for work on the
demolition of the old and the building of the new to start.
Though Wembley is synonymous with English football, the
stadium has also witnessed other historic moments.
When London hosted the 1948 Olympics, Wembley provided the
cinder track on which Dutch housewife Fanny-Blankers Koen won
four gold medals and Czech great Emil Zatopek announced his
arrival on the world stage by winning the 10,000 meters.
In 1963, British boxer Henry Cooper lost a memorable battle
with the then Cassius Clay after initially felling the man who
would later become Mohammed Ali -- and probably the greatest
fighter of all time -- at a packed Wembley Stadium.
Speedway, rugby league and greyhound racing were more
regularly on the bill at Wembley, which was also a successful
music venue -- notably with the Live Aid concert in 1985.
On Monday, as the bulldozers got to work, Wembley began a
four-year-long wait for its renaissance as one of the world's
great sporting venues.
From folly to football's home ground, Wembley is just
getting ready for its next incarnation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
