By Nathan Jackson
March 24 2007

Whilst most City fans spent their day laughing at Rochdale smashing Stockport County, theimps.tk went to Wembley Stadium as England's Under 21 side took on Italy's Under 21. Despite a 3-3 scoreline, the game was poor in quality, with several so called "Premiership" quality players playing badly.

What makes football the greatest game in the world? Is it that anything can happen at anytime, is it seeing players smash it in from 30 odd yards? Is it even possibly seeing 11 players hopefully trying their hardest for you?

The answer is that football brings people together. Once you enter those turnstiles, it doesn't matter what religion, gender, sexuality, or even how rich you are, it matters that you are all united to see your team winning. Wembley is a fitting "Mecca" to football in this country, with footballing pilgrims making the journey from all 4 corners of this country.

Fans of different clubs united together regardless of local rivalries. Whether it's the Boston United fan contemplating their impending future about 4 rows in front of you, or the Arsenal fan in the seat next to you that seems to think that non-London based fans don't deserve to come to Wembley, or even the girl who's only come because her boyfriend wanted to go, each fan will be there cheering on their team, united with all those around them by the love for their club/country.

My day at Wembley started with a rather unwelcoming ringing from my alarm at 5:45am, accompanied by getting into my car at 6am, then having to trudge 120something miles of motorway to New Barnet train station. Having parked there and spent about 40 minutes getting to Wembley via Kings Cross, Oxford Circus and Marylebone, I finally arrived outside Wembley Stadium.

Having spent time going to find my turnstile, I noticed a sign for "Stadium Shop" so I decided to go find it. About 20 minutes later I had walked around the whole stadium twice, unable to locate a supposedly easy-to-spot stadium shop. Having asked a steward it turned out the only shops are inside the actual ground itself, which only begged the question about why there were arrows pointing to a general stadium shop that didn't exist???

Having found absolutely nothing to do outside the ground, finally entering the turnstiles at around 10:30pm because of a small delay where it appeared oil was leaking out of one of the escalators. After ascending several staircases, I was forced to walk near enough around half the stadium to get to my seat. Surely it would have been more appropriate to have people entering turnstiles near to where there seats actually are?

Having found the block I was supposed to go in, and I was just stunned. I had gone into this day thinking that it would be overhyped and it would turn out to be nothing more than just another bowl.....I was quite wrong. It was absolutely huge, and the pictures you can see are the view from my seat, not even at the top of the top tier. It appeared that every seat offered a great view of the stadium, and unlike the Millennium Stadium this ground actually looked pleasing to the eye.

The game got underway with the stadium only about half full. Despite having sold 60,000 tickets there must have only been 40,000 people there (I haven't seen the attendance at the time of writting this). All the empty space made it virtually impossible to create an atmosphere, especially when Italy took a lead after just 28 seconds when Pazzini made the most of a hesitant defence and unleashed a fantastic shot around Lee Camp, the quickest goal ever scored at any version of Wembley.

England went on to dominate the half, and finally equalised after half an hour when David Bentley superbly sent a free kick into the net from roughly 25 yards out. Hesistant defending from the Italians enabled Wayne Routledge to give England the lead, a lead that lasted just 2 minutes as Pazzini again couldn't believe his luck after being unmarked just 6 yards out.

Matt Derbyshire made it 3-2 with a close range effort, before Pazzini equalised with his hat-trick goal, again benefitting from less than pleasing defending, and that's how the game ended.

Overall, I think Wembley is a fantastic stadium, but they certainly need to sort some things out, especially the fact that there's nothing to do outside the ground except walk-around, the nearest thing you could do is do your shopping at Asda. However, if City do finish in the Playoffs, I certainly wouldn't mind coming here again.