ENGLAND TALK: Do England have a Wembley problem?

Atmosphere, paper planes and breaking teams down

Thomas Tuchel got off to a winning start as England manager with two home wins, kicking off England’s 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign. A goal in either half saw England see off Albania before they put three past Latvia with no reply.

It was fine, I think the narrative around qualifying and squad picking is quite drawn out. England did what they needed to do, Harry Kane got 2 goals to show he’s still England’s best option whilst Myles Lewis-Skelly, Reece James and Eberechi Eze all got their first England goals with some good performances alongside them.

England sit top of the group, a group they will expect to win with ease with Andorra and Serbia the other two opponents. Serbia had Nations League Promotion/Relegation play off games this break instead of qualifying - they beat Austria 3-1 on aggregate and are probably the toughest team in the group for England though they did edge them out in their first game of Euro 2024. Albania would them come next but a 2-0 win did the job for England, the away game may be trickier and Albania continue to improve as a nation but still you’d expect England to win that. Then Latvia and Andorra round off the group - Latvia beat Andorra in matchday one so I’d expect the latter to find themselves bottom of the group.

After having a break from writing about England I’ve decided to pick it up here, but it was lead by me attending the Latvia game on Monday night. I was also at the Ireland game in November, the last match England played in 2024 with Lee Carsley in charge. So I’ve been to 2 of the last 3 Wembley games and I do wonder - is there a Wembley issue for England?

I’ve always found Wembley a great day out, it’s usually cheap enough against “lesser” nations and you know the England squad is going to be fairly strong so there are good footballers on display. I’ve seen 8 goals in my last 2 visits. Away fans are always in good spirits too, that lower expectation just leads to them looking like they are having fun on a day out. I also don’t think there’s really a bad view in Wembley having sat in multiple locations in the stadium over the years. Sure I’d prefer to not top row of the top tier if possible but I’d take it over not being there.

But the atmosphere is where I think the issue comes. There’s a few sides to this in my opinion so I’ll look at them separately but whilst individually they may not be as big an issue, together I think they contribute to a wider issue.

Attendance

Attendance seems like a good starting point. Just under 80,000 watched England v Latvia on Monday with over 82,000 on Friday for Albania. So over 160,000 people were in attendance for 2 games in 4 days. Those are good numbers so attendance probably isn’t an issue here. But the stadium wasn’t full, online it was a “sell-out” but that doesn’t always equate to maximum capacity. The Friday and Monday fixtures and kick off times probably didn’t help too much but there was still a good number of people in the ground.

In fact the attendance at Wembley has been fine for a while, rarely falling below 70,000 lastly in 2021 v Hungary). Maybe being 20,000 short of full capacity isn’t “fine” but only the Nations League second leg of France v Croatia in Paris had a bigger attendance over the weekend.

So if it’s not the attendance causing the lack of atmosphere, where else does it lie?

The Football

It’s the football. The actually entertainment gained by watching England at home is low. I don’t think it’s solely England’s fault though. It’s tough in this day and age where you set up a team to play football on the ground and the opposition counteract this by sitting deep where they look to absorb the pressure.

Here’s the thing, England v Latvia is a fixture between the 4th and 140th best teams in the world (per the FIFA World Rankings). Latvia are not expecting to get anything out of the game and to their credit I thought they played well. They defended valiantly and had a chance to take a shock lead in the first half. They kept their heads up, played it out from the back and looked to beat a press which they did on a couple of occasions.

England meanwhile looked to get the ball wide in the first half, find over or underlaps and get the ball into the box. But Latvian defenders were often first to the ball and when they weren’t England found a solid keeping effort in the way. It becomes a very repetitive game, England have the ball, play if forward, try to move Latvia around, get some space out wide through a switch or an overlap, get into the box, fire across, block, restart.

England did eventually break the deadlock but it was a terrific free kick from Reece James rather than something in the gameplan. The second and third goals felt more like things England would have worked on where the second came from some neat play down the right and Rice got to the byline underlapping in the box to fire across for Kane to tap in. The third came where Eze found some space driving of the left, it opened up as Latvia tried to cut out potential passing lanes in the box and Eze instead went alone and scored (not to discredit the solo run as it was exactly what England were missing at the time but you could see how it opened up and how other movement also subtly helped Eze drive on).

But as I celebrated, some people around me took that as their cue to leave. 76 Minutes into the game. I think the people next to me had actually already left the ground at that point. So at 3-0 up England played out 14 minutes plus added time in front of a slowly emptying Wembley Stadium. Let’s be honest, when you come to a game like this you are hoping for goals as you know the game will struggle competitively. You can have an exciting 0-0 in my opinion but that usually comes from equally matched teams.

Much of England’s fixtures at Wembley are in games that are not evenly matched, England should be comfortably winning a lot of their games there that aren’t against big nations. So when you turn up and pay your money, see England pass it around but not do much with it, it can be quite boring. The FA will see 160,000 people over 2 days and think that’s good, which it is. But the paper airplanes were out in full force on Monday night, a usual sign that the game is lacking any real interest.

England and Wembley is a great platform to get new people into the sport, it’s a fantastic stadium. But when the crowd are more interested in how far someone can throw their paper ticket folded into an airplane, it shows their is an issue with football itself as are you really going to gain that many new fans if the main attraction is struggling to keep eyes on it.

We get into these post tournament buzzes, a Euro’s final where we think next time is our time, everyone supports England and it’s cool to support England. Then you go to these games and the interest cools a little. I don’t have too much of an issue with how England approached the game but it was noticeable how flat the stadium was. Is it the players and coaches job to entertain us? No, it’s their job to win, which they did. But for a new comer, a casual, what was on show there for them to be like “Who do England play next?” or “When' is the next England Wembley game?”. The answer to both is Andorra (away then home), another game that falls into this category of England versus a low ranked country.

England away from Wembley

In between those England play Senegal in a friendly in Nottingham and that is something I can get behind. England playing elsewhere like they did when the new Wembley was being built. It showcases the team to other parts of the country who can’t get to these Wembley games. There it matters less how entertaining it is, the entertainment is you get to see England v Senegal.

It’s just the games at Wembley for me, England have underperformed here in the last couple of years. These are the Wembley results since the start of the 23/24 season:

• 3-0 v Latvia 24/03/25

• 2-0 v Albania 21/03/25

• 5-0 v Ireland 17/11/24

• 1-2 v Greece 10/10/24

• 2-0 v Finland 10/09/24

• 0-1 v Iceland 07/06/24 *

• 2-2 v Belgium 26/03/24 *

• 0-1 v Brazil 23/03/24 *

• 2-0 v Malta 17/11/23

• 3-1 v Italy 17/10/23

• 1-0 v Australia 13/10/23

(* indicates friendly, bold indicates lost).

There is only one competitive loss in there but there’s not a lot to shout home about - the Italy and Ireland wins were good but Ireland went down to 10 men at 0-0.

Friendlies have been quite woeful in all honesty, hardly a big showcase of how good England can be. Then it’s a bunch of games where you’d hope England would win more comfortably. This isn’t a hit piece on England being bad, just how England at Wembley feel underwhelming. 7 wins from 11 may not seem it but a handful of good performances in 11 games shows it. We can’t decide the fixture list so I’m not blaming the level of opponents, just more how watching these games can feel like a chore at times. So when you’re in the ground, it’s not overly compelling and the atmosphere falls flat. No wonder people have started trying to find their own entertainment in the stands.

Overall I just wonder if this is a problem, or if I’m just overreacting. But I don’t think it’s a good thing that fans are more interested in watching paper planes and trying to start Mexican Waves than watching what’s right in front of them.