Bluffers’ Guide to the Play-off Finals: will this be the richest football match of all time?

Vast sums of money and colossal quantities of pride are at stake under Wembley’s arch. Martin Bly calls the shots

Bluffer can kick off their discourses on an unusually exciting weekend by asking their rapt audiences to consider what will be the most lucrative sporting contest ever staged at Wembley Stadium in either of its incarnations.

There is no doubt that the World Cup Final of 1966 will remain for the foreseeable future the most famous contest ever to take place under either the Towers or the Arch. But Saturday’s Championship Play-off Final between Hull City and Sheffield Wednesday offers the largest financial prize in the history of English football – and quite possibly the biggest prize awarded on the result of a single match in the global history of the sport.

World Cup Finals, European Cup Finals, Champions’ League Finals and FA Cup Finals all confer significant wealth on their winners in one way or another. But to put this in context, Manchester United won a little less than ?2 million along with the FA Cup at Wembley last week.

To the victors on Saturday will go ?200 million in television and sponsorship money from next year’s Premiership. To the losers, diddly squat.

No wonder the managers and fans are taking it seriously. Hull City’s Steve Bruce has been here before, in every sense. He has won promotion to the Premier League three times already, twice with Birmingham (once via the play-offs), and with Hull at the end of his first season with the club in 2013.

Bluffers will wish to point out that as well as making money, Bruce can make history on Saturday – for no manager in history has yet achieved four promotions to the Premier League (we will gloss over the relegations).

Wednesday’s Carlos Carvalhal has no such record as his team attempt to become the first side to have finished sixth in the Championship and subsequently won promotion since Blackpool in 2010 – although much good it did the subsequently benighted Blackpool.

Pro-Wednesday bluffers will point to their experienced and in-form wide-man Ross Wallace, who scored two of their three-goals against injury-ravaged Brighton in the play-offs, and who has previously won promotion to the Premiership with Burnley and Sunderland. They will also point out that Hull will field their second-choice goalkeeper, as Allan McGregor has a bad back.

Pro-Hull bluffers can retort that reserve keeper Eldin Jakupovic has six clean sheets in 13 appearances this season, including against Arsenal in the FA Cup, and that Bruce and many of his players are familiar with a big day out under the Arch having contested the 2014 FA Cup Final – also against Arsenal, and a heartbreaking 3-2 defeat.

Nothing remotely comparable to a place in the Premiership is on offer in the weekend’s other two Finals, but they will not want for intensity and pride. Barnsley face Millwall in the League One tussle on Sunday, with caretaker manager Paul Heckingbottom’s Yorkshire side hoping to kick on with the momentum of their 6-1 aggregate annihilation of Walsall in the semis.

Bluffers can point out that Barnsley are visiting Wembley for the second time in two months, having come from behind to beat Oxford United in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy Final in April. But Millwall are not without big-match experience – eight members of their current squad have played at Wembley before.

AFC Wimbledon and Plymouth Argyle round off the weekend’s entertainment on Monday, and Bluffers can suggest that the groundsmen will be particularly pleased that this fixture is the last of the three, because Wimbledon will hope for great things from “The Beast”, their monstrous striker Adebayo Akinfenwa, who will clomp about to great effect on the hallowed turf.

Akinfenwa is in the Guinness Book of Records as the strongest player on the Fifa 16 game stats, with a strength rating of 98 out of 99. But Plymouth are well organised defensively, and have the edge on meetings this term: the away sides won each of these teams’ league meetings, but Plymouth won 3-2 at Wimbledon when the pair met in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.