At half-time, my friend Steve got talking to the couple sitting next to us. We four were sharing a table at the Laurent Perrier lounge at Wembley Stadium, a light-filled, open bar that feels like the parts of Heathrow Airport that get you hyped up to travel (Bloody Marys at Spuntino) rather than those that plunge you sordidly into a state of distress (any chaotic Spoons).
Both were impeccably dressed — estate agent chic, I’d say, though more Mayfair independent than Clapham Foxton’s — and fairly quiet, even after a few glasses of vintage Champagne. Clearly both were big football fans, especially her: this was the FA cup final just gone, United against City, and when the red side of Manchester scored two in the first half, she was ecstatic.
This was my first foray into the corporate embrace of Club Wembley — which anyone can join — a transitory place where diehard fans mingle with offshore millionaires, bankers entertain clients, and people from Love Island sit nibbling olives. Drinks are on the house for those who’ve coughed up the hefty membership fee. And I get it. It’s basically Soho House for footy fans.
Isn’t football supposed to just be pints and pies on the terraces? Yeah, normally, but Club Wembley was packed — and not with the boring types you might expect
We found out about the Love Island stardom later: “You look like you might have a few followers,” I said. “About a million,” came the reply. A friend told me after the game that these two were Andrew Le Page and Natasha Ghouri, who met in series eight of the dating show and are still going strong today. Even I know about the line, “I just licked her tit or whatever”, the work of Le Page and a sparkling moment in British television history. Possibly one of ITV’s finest on record.
Conversation was less emphatic at the bar, where smoked salmon appeared atop blinis and, before the match, Champagne just kept coming. Half-time and we switched to sauvignon blanc, still much less my usual wheelhouse when watching football (lager, Spanish). It was, all in all, a bonkers afternoon. Not a box, suited and booted, the epitome of that detached sort of luxury and which I only experience when taken by someone stupidly wealthy; and a world away from my regular stomping ground of Selhurst Park, home of the mighty Crystal Palace.
And so, inauthentic? This is a subject always talked about when it comes to football in the UK today: isn’t it supposed to just be pints and pies on the terraces? Yeah, normally, but Club Wembley was packed — and not with the boring types you might expect, loafer-clad and there only thanks to Deloitte. These fans were at it. Really. They were “just drinking Champagne or whatever” upstairs, rather than lager somewhere else. Get on reality TV and that could be you some day.
