Went to the game last night - my first experience of an England game at Wembley. Our performance was wank but I thought Belarus played some decent stuff - I'd say 3-0 definitely flattered us.
What I would say though is that the atmosphere was awful. Maybe it was because we'd qualified and it was a nothing match, or the fact we didn't play well but I used to go quite regularly when we played our qualifying matches at Old Trafford and the atmosphere was always much better there!
Also was surrounded by people who clearly didn't watch much football - and at one point a few guys sat behind me were getting way too excited when a Mexican wave started going round (something that shouldn't be seen in football stadiums anyway IMO!).
Overall though a very good qualifying campaign - lets hope our key players are fit for the WC though!
I was there too. I've seen England a couple of times at the new Wembley and the atmosphere has been pretty flat each time. The crowd went crazy for Beckham when he came on.
You can't really criticise too much. I don't think many countries in the world could get an attendance of 76k in a dead rubber qualifying game, against a team as poor as Belarus, with the team's best players missing.
Scoring after 4 minutes took all the tension out of the game. Inside the stadium it always felt like it was going to be a comfortable 3 or 4 nil. We always nick one in the last ten minutes as the oppo tire and apart from the one break that Foster saved, Belarus lacked quality in front of goal.
To compare attendances from last night:
England - Belarus: 76,000
France - Austria: 78,000
Italy - Cyprus: 15,000
Germany - Finalnd: 51,000
