The new look. Picture / Reuters
Leakage from a roof section which required 50 drenched fans to be reseated during Saturday's FA Trophy final at the new Wembley was but the latest in a sequence of setbacks for the stadium which no less of an architectural enthusiast than Wayne Rooney has already hailed as
"the greatest on Earth".
The Manchester United and England forward will have the opportunity to test that assessment at first hand on Saturday as his team take on Chelsea in an FA Cup final that will serve as the official opening of a new stadium that has endured four years of wrangling, delays and rising budgets. Meanwhile, the attitude of those who have created the visionary arena is essentially this: into every major project a little rain must fall; embrace the bigger picture.
And that picture is-
* The biggest football stadium in the world, and the most expensive stadium ever at £789 million ($2.1 billion).
* It's twice the size and four times as high as the old stadium - with the largest roof-covered capacity in the world.
* The roof arch, visible for more than 60km, is 130m long, the largest single-span roof structure in the world.
* Five levels of airy atriums containing cafes, bars, shops and restaurants, replacing the old, dark, dank concourses.
* An arch-supported roof, consisting of four parts - three of which are moveable - can retract to allow the sun and the rain to fall directly on to the turf below.
* The arch has been set so it casts no shadow on the pitch.
By comparison:
* The original Wembley, commissioned in 1922 in order to host the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, was completed within just 300 days - in good time to host the 1923 FA Cup final.
* The total cost was £750,000 - big money in those days, but a figure which, by even the most extravagant means of reckoning inflation, corresponds to no more than a third of the latest figure.
THE INDEPENDENT
