It is too easy to describe Wembley simply as a football ground; that would be like calling St Peter’s Basilica a chapel. Wembley is more, far more: an aspiration, an inspiration. Its exclusivity may have been compromised by a debt discounting flurry of play-offs and other end-of-season bric-a-brac, but out in the big wide world of football Wembley remains a castle on a hill.
Yet, for all that, England did not call it home until the late1940s. No club ever made it their permanent home. Arsenal flirted only briefly with the idea while Tottenham Hotspur’s temporary tenancy lasted longer than they wanted.
Greyhounds have seen more of Wembley than footballers. Speedway bikes chopped off the corners of the pitch while rugby codes, pop stars, boxers, evangelists, gridiron giants, stock car racers and, infamously, horse-riding showjumpers all take their turn. The Olympic Games, too: main venue in1948 and summoned for duty again in 2012.
But it is the romance of football which has lifted Wembley
