Flog - Stop shouting. Please, just stop shouting. You are a stadium.

For the first time since it’s reopening, I went to the magnificent new Wembley stadium early this weekend to watch the Wembley Cup. It truly is a stunning piece of architecture, and just about justifies it’s massive price tag when you first come out of the gangway and see the pitch, the stands, the roof and everything else that still looks shiny and clean.
However- and of course, there is a however, because this is me who is talking here- I hate it.
I actually despise it, and for one reason. Or to be more precise, one person. Said person sits in a booth at Wembley, somewhere within the stands, with a microphone. I can only imagine he gets through seven of these every match. Every six seconds he shouts the word ‘WEMBLEY!!!’ so loud that your seat vibrates. I imagine him to be the kind of person that you immediately take a disliking to after a few minutes of mindless small talk. I say small, he would probably shout ‘Nice to meet you… here… at this PARTY!!!’
If you haven’t guessed already, I’m talking about the PA announcer.
Who, by the way, must want to remain anonymous, because no matter how hard I try, I cannot find his name anywhere- and by which I mean Google.
He is a terror of a man. The ticket I obtained was a day pass for both the Celtic vs. Al-Ahly game and also Tottenham vs. Barcelona. If he had got any more excited over these two games then I can only imagine he orgasms himself to death when the first day of the season comes about. At the end of the day, it’s the Wembley Cup. This was the European champions. They were not here to bust a lung trying to win this piece of crap silverware, evidence alone being their starting line up, which contained only one member of the side that overcame United in the final in May. The way Mr PA carried on, you would think Messi had come onto the field naked and scored a goal with his erection. It’s awful.
Was that it? Was that all there was to annoy you, Hayward? No, actually, it wasn’t all. In fact what happened next simply infuriated me.
The Wembley event organisers put on a little show in between the two matches, just as Spurs and Barca took to the field. Before they could kick off, MR PA came-a-booming once more; ‘Welcome…to WEMBLEY!!! Now Ladies and Gentlemen, if you would cast your gaze to the roof here…at WEMBLEY!!!’ It’s not a fucking planetarium, you know. We’re English- if you just said ‘Oi. Look up’ we would have done it if we thought the sky was raining money or something. As it was, four paratroopers who had recently returned from the frontline in Afghanistan had lined up on the walkway across the roof and prepared to abseil to the pitch. As MR PA shouted them to start, they began their descent.
To the theme tune of Mission Impossible.
Hold on, what? It’s off the map, is it not? That’s genuinely mental, surely? These four men, recently brought home from a battle that we could safely say we have no idea who is winning, took to the skies and not only fight in our army but were expected to entertain a crowd on their return- to the theme of Mission Impossible??!! Wembley, for half a minute, took on a horrible sense of propaganda. Whenever the words ‘Afghanistan’ or ‘frontline’ were mentioned, the entire stadium applauded, but not in a encouraging and heartfelt way, more as if Wembley had put strings on everyone’s hands on entrance. It felt fake, dirty. And overall, horribly wide of the mark.
Wembley is a beautiful place, and is a lot better run than the old stadium when it would take at least a week to get home after a game. The food is expensive, but who thought it wouldn’t be? But overall, the whole marketing of the place is totally foolish. A football game is no longer a football game anymore, it’s a PR exercise, a theatre. A crowd is apparently not entirely happy with seeing their team play anymore- we have to have fireworks, stunts, things blowing up, and most of all it has to be shouted at us through a microphone from a little man who at the moment, is the World Hide and Seek champion. Should I ever seek him, though, please tell the court that the murder was just.