Football Association chief Martin Glenn vows to spend big on upgrading Wembley for 2020 European Championship
Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn has pledged to plough money into upgrading Wembley Stadium to ensure it is among the top one per cent of world stadia for the 2020 European Championship.
The national stadium, which reopened in 2007 after a £800m rebuild, is set to host the semi-finals and final of the tournament, which for the first time will be staged in 13 cities across the continent.
Glenn highlighted improving the wireless internet capabilities of the 90,000-seater venue – which, ironically, is billed as “Connected by EE” as part of a sponsorship deal with the mobile phone network – as one of the priorities.
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He said: “We built Wembley 10 years ago; we’ve got to keep spending money. The FA is in better financial shape nowadays, which means that investment will continue at a pace.
“So, for example, we would expect to have a much better level of wireless connectivity by 2020. It’s not bad now but that’s the kind of thing you need to do.
“When people turn up to stadia they expect to be able to download stuff on their phones, so we’ll make sure we’re in the top one per cent of world stadia when people show up for the semis and final. We’re investing massively in Wembley going forward.”
Glenn: We want to win Euro 2020
Glenn, speaking at an event at City Hall to launch the branding for Euro 2020, talked up England’s chances of winning the tournament despite their failure to win a knockout match since 2006.
“We want to win it – bloody hell, why not? Why wouldn’t you? We will turn up to every tournament as contenders – that has to be our expectation,” added the former United Biscuits chief.
“You can never say you’re going to win it because everyone else wants to win it too, but that is our ambition, to turn up to every tournament as a reasonable favourite and take it from there.
“We’ve had pretty good success in recent qualifying – that doesn’t appear to be the issue so much as the tournament resilience. We should be, given the depth of football in this country, one of the teams that should be getting there and fighting it out.”