There is however a problem. The new Wembley is not slated as the centerpiece of a 2012 London Olympics, or any thereafter. Remember? It wasn't designed for athletics as well as football, though it will supposedly be awkwardly convertible from one to the other. To make it dual-purpose would have cost too much and probably compromised it horribly as a soccer stadium anyway. Which is why the London Olympic bid for 2012 schedules it as a secondary venue: a place for just two football games. Should London win the Olympics, we shall have to build a new stadium for track and field events, along with much else, in a new 500-acre park out east near Stratford. This is going to be mighty confusing to people. Because we've got the Arch, it's great, it's highly visible as you fly into London, but that particular 90,000 seat stadium will be of very little use to Olympians and is in the wrong place anyway.

Meanwhile, it is making people stare and wonder during their descent into Heathrow. It is a great new visual fix. The Wembley Arch might be just a big hula-hoop up near Ikea so far as Londoners are concerned, but from the air it is a mystic talisman. On the ground, it is titanic. If you look at the cross-section comparing it with its much-loved predecessor, the neoclassical 1924 Wembley Stadium with its domed concrete pair of entrance towers, the difference in scale is staggering.