Is London the right choice or should they look further afield?
The FA have announced plans to re-vamp the existing Wembley site, if several conditions are met.
But the Government insist a final decision has yet to be made.
The project, which has been beset by problems for months. could cost as much as £700m, and may see the Twin Towers scrapped.
FA chief executive Adam Crozier informed press on Wednesday that a final location will be selected by the end of April 2002.
Can the new scheme finally restore some national pride?
Re: Dan's impression of Birmingham (below), you obviously haven't been. The fact Birmingham has won "cleanest city in Britain" more times than any other speaks for itself. Birmingham is the third most visited place in Britain, only London and Edinburgh have more visitors. So if it's so bad Dan, why do they go to Brum? The fact is, anything that Birmingham does, it is better than London can! Just look to the Motor Show, the CBI conference. Look at London, the Dome, the bridge that no one can walk on. The impression that almost all fans have of Wembley is that it is a hell hole to get to, it is dirty, badly staffed, and it is overpriced.
The Wembley bid has been given money by the lottery, the government and the GLC equalling £197 million and still that is not enough, still they want more to build a national stadium in a gridlocked part of the most congested city in the world. It's no wonder Britain is the laughing-stock of the sporting world.
Nick,
England
An international airport, a mainline train station and more motorways than you can shake a stick at, at half the cost and half the travelling distance for the vast majority of supporters in the country. The NEC site makes far more sense that Wembley, even for many people living in the south east. Just for once can we have some common sense?
Stewart,
Hong Kong
Obviously I'm missing something her but how can anyone justify spending £750m on a stadium? The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was built for just £180m so what on earth is the extra money going on?
David Lawton,
Colchester, England
Why should the Government have anything to do with it? If it's going to be commercially worthwhile, let the FA build it how they want. If not, then consign the plans to the dustbin before any more money gets wasted on it.
Julian Hayward,
UK
No Dan, of London, shame on you! Choosing Birmingham for the national stadium is not about whether ignorant people like you think that Birmingham is "one of the ugliest, dirtiest concrete monstrosities in the world" (have you ever visited Birmingham Dan?) It's about choosing a location that is preferred by the majority of fans and chairman across England.
More football fans live outside of London than in it, why do they all have to travel to the bottom right corner for every final and international football game? Obviously, Birmingham can stage big football events - the European Cup Final and Euro '96 games within the last few years at Villa Park spring to mind. Seems a good choice to me.
Richard Coe,
London
Much as I like the idea of a stadium in the Midlands, the reality is that it cannot happen. As we have seen with the 2005 World Championships, London is the only English city that has a realistic chance of staging major games in the future.
Allister Webb,
England
The London choice is the best for English football. If England wants to get the World Cup in the future, FIFA will want a final played in London, not Birmingham or Coventry. Organisers of big competitions want key cities to host events such as the world cup, Olympics and world athletic championships. Also, does it really matter where a national stadium is when 99% of people watch the games on TV?
Barry,
Scotland
They should build a cheaper 100,000 capacity stadium in Birmingham. Some of the money saved could be used to renovate the existing Wembley into an Athletics stadium for the 2005 World Championships. This will bring money into the local area and make most people happy.
Pete,
London
I can't see the point in building a brand new stadium when there are plenty in England that would do an adequate job,
such as Anfield, Higbury, Old Trafford, St James Park and Villa Park.
Sam shackell,
Englishman in New Zealand
Give it to Birmingham, you must be joking. Have you experienced the traffic on the M6 near Brum? It's got to be the most congested bit of motorway in the country.
KC,
UK
The thought of placing a national football stadium in Birmingham - one of the ugliest, dirtiest concrete monstrocities in the world is ludicrous.
Of course Wembley is the proper choice, but common sense has been hijacked by the jealousies of the non-London populace. Shame on you!
Dan,
London, England
No wonder the rest of the world laughs! This is another dome blunder - Just build it! For once make a decision and live with it.
Tom Finnis,
expat-usa
I'm disgusted with the Wembley decision. Once again the London bias has stepped in. It is an outrage seeing that 75% of true soccer fans live north of Watford, plus the fact that the Brum bid was in a better situation and half the price.
Andy W,
England
The FA have been repeatedly delaying this decision, giving Wembley more and more time to get it's bid together. Even now, the Wembley bid has questions hanging over it and Birmingham is being kept on standby. The FA should just admit that Birmingham is the better option. (After all, this is about the future of English football, not the past). The only way London will work is if the Government steps in to throw taxpayers money at it - sound familiar?
Daniel,
England
This is an outrageous decision by the FA - the whole ethos of the sport is to provide entertainment to the masses - therefore Birmingham would have been an ideal venue given its proximity to the 'population centre of gravity' within England.
Nick,
London, UK
As a former resident born and bred in Wembley and now living in Canada, I meet football fans from all over the world who all know about the home of the game being the Stadium. How can you possible consider moving such an icon to another place. If Buckingham Palace were destroyed by terrorists tomorrow would it be rebuilt in Scunthorpe so that it would be closer for people in the north.
Chris Brown,
Canada
Birmingham is on stand-by in case plans don't work out - well, things are almost certain to not 'work out' so why not just give it to Birmingham anyway?
I'll tell you why not - that would require both guts and common-sense on the part of the authorities and we all know that these commodities are in very short supply in this country!
Bob Armour,
Coventry, UK
I think that it is disgusting that once again another 'national' venue has gone to London. Why hasn't the Government listened to the ordinary fan and realised that the man on the street wants the stadium in the heart of the country, where it is accessible by all? Once again the moneymen of football have been listened to and the working class fans have been ignored!
Miss M Gore,
England
As per usual the governing bodies of sport seem to think the entire populace live in London. Why not place it in a more central location? And they wonder why the Dome was such a flop!
Steven Leicester,
England
This decision only goes to show the short sightedness of the FA in choosing a sight that is so hard to get to in an area simply not equipped to handle large crowds.
Any decision makers with real guts and endeavour would have gone elsewhere. But the real issue must be the money - the dramatic escalation of costs every time the project gets mentioned; where the money will come from and where all the millions earmarked for the original concept are now. The government's lamentable and laughable interference must also be questioned.
Simon Timothy,
UK
The most irritating thing about all this is that the 'powers that be' ever pretended that there was a fair and reasonable hearing of the facts and opinions of the majority of the football public.
Let's face it, it was always going to be London despite the fact the England tour of the country's major club grounds was a resounding success and that most people do not favour Wembley...the London lobby hasn't forgiven Birmingham for the success of the NEC over the last 25 years and they simply would not allow it to happen again.
Mike Stevens,
England
The right decision has been made. Wembley has been the home of football for as long as anyone can remember and it should remain that way. The only argument that people seem to have against the location is transport. Funny, I can't remember the last time I was on the M6 or M42 without being stuck in a traffic jam.
Richard Aldington,
England
The fans want it in Birmingham, the Birmingham bid is cheaper, more attractive, more imaginative and far more financially viable, so why am I not surprised the 'powers that be' have plumped for Wembley?
I live in London (Walthamstow) and it currently would take me about the same time to get to a new national stadium in Birmingham as it does to get to Wembley. The London-centric attitude of many national bodies has stifled innovation and original thought in sport and many other areas of British life for far too long. Unfortunately, I see no sign of these misguided attitudes changing.
Julian Coleman,
UK
The beer is cheaper and the curries are better in Birmingham. What more could an England fan ask for?
Neil Dance,
England.
This fiasco reminds me very much of the one we had in Scotland a few years back when Hampden was rebuilt.
To be honest the only reason for that was to give Rangers and Celtic a neutral venue to fight their cup finals in. And to give the blokes in the SFA a cushy place to swan about in.
Then as now there were better things to waste our money on. We too have other grounds where the internationals could be played and look where we have ended up, failing to qualify for the last two major championships.
Money well spent? More like money poured down a drain.
The money for this would be better spent on encouraging youngsters to come into the game because England and Scotland are both relying far too much on foreign imports to support our game.
A. Phillips,
Scotland
Typical and unsurprising that London is once again the only place that seems to matter to the powers that be. It makes no sense financially; it makes no sense transport wise (London's infrastructure can't even cope properly with a normal day, let alone the number of people going to a huge stadium), it makes no sense as a 'national' stadium since most of the nation is too far away from it.
A. Williams,
England
I agree with Doug Ellis. Having the national stadium at Wembley is against the wishes of all of the football fans that live outside of London. Birmingham is the ideal site. It means that fans from both the north and south can get to the stadium in a few hours. It is just another case of the government and the FA not even considering any other location than in the capital.
Adrian Holloway,
England
Whenever or wherever the new stadium is built I feel that the twin towers should be incorporated into the design. Ask footballers of all ages from anywhere in the world where they would love to play football and the answer is Wembley in the shadow of the twin towers. Wembley is an international footballing landmark.
The romantic and nostalgic part of Wembley will always be the towers. I'm surprised they are not listed buildings.
Jeff,
UK
Once again, politics seem to prevail over common sense and the public's wishes. What on earth is a national stadium necessary for? Playing internationals all over the country was great, but once again the world (according to the FA and the politicians) revolves around London.
Marcel,
The Netherlands
Am I alone in being based in the Midlands yet supportive of Wembley as the ideal site for our national stadium? Wembley is and will always be the home of football, and the only viable venue should we bid to host a future World Cup.
Wembley also wins hands down in terms of transport and accessibility - the motorways around Birmingham grind to a halt when 40,000 leave Villa Park or 15,000 the NEC, so I shudder to think what would happen if they had a 90,000 capacity stadium there.
Dave,
Nottingham, England