Come on you reds, blues, whites 10 July, 2007

England’s recent friendly against Brazil gave me my first glimpse of the new Wembley stadium. For an architectural structure that’s created so much controversy, taken so long to build and cost so much it seems a bit, um, underwhelming.

The ‘triumphal’ arch is impressive from a distance, but there’s no element of surprise or delight to the stadium. No emotional connection.

Contrast that with Munich’s Allianz Arena.

Picture of Allianz Arena lit up white at nightPicture of Allianz Arena lit up blue at nightPicture of Allianz Arena lit up blue at night

The outer shell changes colour depending on which of the local teams is playing. Red for Bayern Munich, Blue for 1860 Munich (with white for derbies and Internationals). Amazing and guaranteed to ignite passions. Imagine being a home supporter and seeing your team’s colours enveloping your stadium. The simplest, yet most visceral connection for any football fan. Suddenly, all of the triumph seems to have disappeared from that arch.

Update

Talking to a friend who’d visited Wembley a few weeks ago it seems that the architects got some things right. He marvelled at the number of toilets (it’s always details); 2,618 of them according to the official Wembley site. A lesson learned from the limited facilities at the old stadium which lead to some, er, interesting workarounds from spectators. At half-time there were usually three queues of people waiting to relieve themselves: one for the cubicles, one for the urinals and one for the sinks. Still, I suppose it makes for easy access to the taps afterwards.

Photography from sismastery, rp72, gonzales2010 and probek on flickr.

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One Response to “Come on you reds, blues, whites”

  1. stuart Says:
    July 14th, 2007 at 1:03 am

    I spose, but……

    The Germany one says “Here I am! Look at me!, I am over here!”

    The Wembley says, “Theres something going on inside, Come and take look”

    Could be argued that Wembley is more British?

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