The 41-year-old England virgin: my first visit to Wembley to watch the national side

I grew up three miles from Wembley Stadium, in Metro-Land, Zone 5. Forget London’s beating heart; this is London’s itchy epidermis.

One of my first jobs was selling hotdogs at (the old) Wembley. My advice to you: do not eat a hotdog at Wembley, unless things have improved significantly in the hygiene stakes in the last 20-odd years. Despite this proximity to the stadium, or perhaps because of the proximity to the hotdogs, I had never been to watch the England team play there.

I’ve been to hundreds of football matches. I have watched almost every England match on the television because… well, because it’s on the television, I suppose. You can’t just not. Can you? Anyway, here is what I noticed, going to Wembley to watch England for the first time.

England football is a moneymaking machine. The tickets are expensive, the snacks are expensive, the souvenirs and gear are expensive. There are more women, and children, than at club football: it feels more like a family day out. I have great sympathy for the parents of eight-year-olds, having to fork out left and right for branded and/or pricey things.

On the other hand, I sympathise with the children being introduced to the England football team. Little do they know...

Because this is an excursion rather than a sporting experience, the England fan is not a discerning customer with regard to the football on display: demand for the product is inelastic of the quality.

There were 84,595 at Wembley on Tuesday night. It was a friendly. England did okay. It’s hard to conceive of a world in which people stop turning out to watch, although England’s performances in recent times have certainly explored the outer limits of the punter’s patience.

Every England match I have ever watched on TV has featured, at some point, a football expert saying that England need to keep the ball better. Ah, if wishing made it so.

From one to 11, Brazil’s players have a better touch than the hosts: I think television muddies that. It’s clearer in the flesh. You cannot keep the ball as well as the opponent if you cannot control it as well as the opponent. Whatever other progress, or lack of, the most recent root-and-branch review has put in place, it all comes down to that one thing.

England, gleaming in white, and Brazil in their supersaturated yellow and blue, make a beautiful spectacle on the green pitch. Perhaps out of deference to the only national side that has a real romantic allure (not you, Gareth)  the Brazil anthem is un-booed. It’s a low-drama, low-stakes game, people wave their little plastic flags.

When Neymar, everyone’s heard of Neymar, gets the ball, squeals of excitement swirl on the wind. There are paper airplanes; one especially well-made example floats all the way down from high in the stands to land at the feet of Ryan Bertrand. He treads on it, oblivious to one of the most accurate deliveries a white shirt receives in the evening. England drift.

But, with England, it is never frictionless. Some people are angry. The players haven’t scored, or shown enough passion. One or two around about are angry with other fans for not showing enough passion. One old man gets very angry with a young man behind him, who is showing his passion by swearing a lot. The old man tells him off. He shouts at him: “Stop ****ing swearing.” He is not making a joke.

On the way out, we get kettled on Wembley Way for 10 minutes, then allowed to advance to the foot of the stairs leading up to the Tube station. A line of unsmiling coppers hold the docile crowd, many of them families and lots of Brazil supporters, there for a further 15 minutes. Should it not be… should it not be better than this?

A nil-nil, merchandise, a friendly, a paper airplane. Gareth's new shape. Sport as milky tea, passions below the surface that people don’t quite know how to express. England 0 Brazil 0 at the home of our national game. Aspirational suburbia, a raspberry meringue from Marks and Spencers, muttered fury at an Urdu notice in the public library, a gammon steak in a Harvester, better luck next time.

That, this, is England.