UNITED KINGDOM: SOCCER / FOOTBALL - Wembley Stadium opens its doors to reporters five months before its public opening

Wembley Stadium, the redeveloped traditional home of British football, was open for inspection by reporters on Monday (December 4). The journalists and photographers were able to examine the interior of the stadium, which can seat 90,000, and hear about plans to host its first rock concert. The band Muse will play there on June 16, 2007. But Chief Executive Michael Cunnah was able to confirm that the first fully public event at the stadium would be the Football Association (FA) Cup Final on Saturday May 19, 2007. The redevelopment of the Wembley site has taken over four years. The old stadium, with its distinctive twin towers, was demolished in 2002 and the FA Cup Final was due to be held at the new stadium on May 13, 2006. However the cost of the construction rose significantly and a series of problems, both in construction and administration, forced the Football Association to cancel that fixture and relocate it to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. England's two World Cup warm-up matches in May and June 2006 also had to be relocated as the Australian construction company Multiplex and the stadium administration argued over the increased costs and the failure to deliver the project on time. In October 2006 it was announced both sides had resolved their differences without a legal battle. Reporters on Monday saw seating in place, the turf on the pitch and scoreboards working. Engineers were still on site but safety equipment such as crowd barriers were in place. Michael Cunnah played down the problems, which dented Multiplex's reputation and left the company predicting a 180 million pound sterling (356 million U.S. dollar) loss on the project, as "a few hiccups". "It has been a long road and there have been bumps on the way," Cunnah said. "The stadium is very large and projects of this type sometimes do have a few hiccups but it is really worth it because you now see the project ahead of you and it just will be a statement for the whole country really in terms of having this fantastic new national stadium. Cunnah said financial problems involving the construction had been exaggerated by reporters, and he avoided making comparisons between Wembley and the building work for the 2012 Olympic Games which will be hosted in London. "You have to be careful with the language. When you set out on a big and complex project, basically you can't know every step of the way, you can't plan it immaculately, you have to actually overcome the challenges as they arrive during that journey. So in that sense we have got a lot of experience now in how to do this but I am sure the Olympic venues will throw up their own challenges, and therefore they will have different issues that they will therefore have to overcome. The Olympics is going to be fabulous," he said. Cunnah said that two soccer matches would be held at the stadium early in 2007 with a reduced capacity of spectators. These would be the statutory test events demanded by local authorities to ensure that the ground, its spectator facilities, communications system and other features were functioning correctly. If all goes well, the stadium would be certified as fit to allow 90,000 spectators enter for the FA Cup Final. "I think the one thing I am looking forward to next year is to allow the public in to see what we have been doing for the last four years. Because I am sure they will be absolutely "wowed" by it. It's a huge stadium. We have got 90,000 seats in, so we can get the most number of people into the (FA) Cup Final or to music concerts. But as you can see it's actually quite an intimate stadium so everybody who does come in will feel part of the action and will have a great view and actually will go away and tell their friends," Cunnah said.

ITN Source | December 5, 2006

Tags:. .equipment. .crowd. .sense. .barriers. .absolutely