Arsenal were no strangers to playing at Wembley in the latter stages of 1998. We’d beaten Newcastle United 2-0 in the FA Cup final in May to secure the second part of the domestic Double, then eased past Manchester United in the Charity Shield in August, winning 3-0.
As the 1998/99 campaign dawned, Arsene Wenger’s side looked forward to competing in the Champions League for the first time, and it was decided they would play their home games at Wembley.
Financially, the move was important for the club as they could fit up to 76,000 supporters into the national stadium, whereas Highbury’s capacity was just over 38,000. That would be reduced further for Champions League matches because of the high advertising hoardings which UEFA demanded, meaning that the front few rows of both the North Bank and the Clock End would be out of bounds.
On September 30, 1998, our two-year Champions League experiment began, with a 2-1 victory over Greek side Panathinaikos. Both goals came courtesy of Emmanuel Petit corners. Firstly, captain Tony Adams slammed the ball home after Vieira nudged the ball to him in the box, and then Vieira glanced home a header from his compatriot’s superbly delivered set-piece.
However, from that point onwards, things began to go awry. Wenger’s side endured a 1-1 draw with Dynamo Kyiv after Sergei Rebrov equalised deep into injury-time. In need of victory against French champions Lens, we came unstuck, losing 1-0 and exiting the competition. Technically, the 73,707 crowd was our highest ever for a ‘home’ crowd, beating the Highbury record against Sunderland in March 1935 by 412 supporters.
In our 2006 interview, skipper Patrick Vieira recalled: “Highbury was our real home. We knew how to prepare, and everything was natural. The thing with Wembley was that, as well as the larger pitch, both teams were away. In fact, foreign teams had the advantage because they almost always raise their game there, as Wembley is so famous. It was tricky at times.”
That proved to be the case again in the second season under the Twin Towers. We needed two injury-time goals from Thierry Henry and Davor Suker to defeat Swedish side AIK Solna 3-1 in the opening match, but home defeats against Barcelona (4-2) and Fiorentina (1-0 courtesy of Gabriel Batistuta’s wondergoal from an acute angle) meant that we dropped into the UEFA Cup at the third round stage.
However, that meant our European matches returned to Highbury, and back in familiar surroundings, Wenger’s team marched to the final, defeating Nantes, Deportivo La Coruna, Werder Bremen and Lens over two legs, winning all their home games.
On the pitch, our two-year stint at Wembley may not have been a roaring success, but attracting 70,000 Gooners for the Champions League matches proved that swathes of fans wanted to come to our games – many more than could fit into the compact and bijou Highbury.
This fact was uppermost in the board’s mind as they developed plans to move away from their long-term home in the late ‘90s, as the first steps were taken to the short hop over to a future Emirates Stadium.
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