SVEN - boy, have you got it wrong, completely, totally, utterly wrong.

Reports that the England national coach wants next year's FA Cup final to be unceremoniously ditched from its traditional Saturday kick-off to the previous Wednesday, have rightly generated a thunderous clap of outrage.

That outburst of indignation heaped upon the Swede's head may be seen as no more than Sven-Goran Eriksson deserves.

But considering that the 2006 FA Cup final is to grace the opening of the new Wembley, then the outcry should not just be many-fold, but million-fold - £757million to be precise.

That's the projected cost - and it's on budget to boot - of the new Wembley and that's how much the Venue of Legends as it is being so vigorously sold, merits its official starting-point on a Saturday afternoon of May sunshine.

Far from the already fraying tradition of the FA Cup being shredded to pieces by such a dastardly Saturday to midweek switch, any such ploy to accommodate Eriksson's men being under his tutelage for 24 rather than 28 days ahead of World Cup 2006 in Germany, would disgrace the immense industry and hard labour currently being expelled from millions of pores to construct a new national stadium into one of the world's leading arenas. It could well be the globe's premier football stadium, bar none.

New Wembley - it has so much more of an authentic and substantial ring than New Labour or New England under Sven - is going to possess a wow factor greater than any Star Trek warp factor.

Currently it is still a bowl being gouged out of the North London footprint of its predecessor. Significantly larger, deeper, wider and more eye-seizing than its illustrious predecessor, but a bowl none the less.

And what a bowl. On a media visit of the new national stadium, it is a monumental sight.

Walking up Wembley way in the old days was ever uplifting especially as those two white towers hoved into view.

But the new Wembley adorned with its sky-tickling arch, is even more of an awe-inspiring vision even it is yet to grow its full outside shell and for many more months until its planned completion date next February, will still resemble a Meccano set in the playground of titans.

Ahead of the actual pupil-popping tour, the presentation was slickness personified. Sharply-suited representatives of Wembley National Stadium Limited, responsible for the entire operation, and Sport England, who have invested £120million of Lottery funding into the arena's development, presented a powerful, prosperous, promising vision of the future.

A battery of stats was accompanied by DVD packaging and computer-generated images of scrub-faced shiny, happy, clappy fans in replica shirts ambling admiringly through the motorway-width concourses decorated by bars, stores, and restaurants of the finished article.

Figures were bandied about like so much mathematical ticker-tape. Enthusiasm was at evangelical levels. If there were dials to output zeal then they would have been cranked beyond 1-10 to number 11.

But it's little wonder that the project - the biggest construction in England apart from the new terminal building at Heathrow - is coursing with so much energy, ebullience and excitement.

When hard hats, fetching fluorescent green to be seen-in jackets were donned in a splat-walk ensemble completed by industrial wellies on the press tour of the new Wembley, then awe commandeered centre stage of the senses.

Earthworks around and especially in the centre of the new stadium are akin to those of Peter Jackson's cinematic triumph, the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

No orcs here, though. Just around 1,200, to peak at 2,500 by November, of mechanics, welders, builders, engineers, construction crew, brickies, sparks, cutters and crane-drivers, shifters, earth-shakers and movers. This is a high-tech army, the purpose of whose march is to propel a 21st stadium into the North London landscape.

Already, the 133-metre high arch - through which the London Eye could roll - is of triumphal proportions. Some say it is visible 34 miles away on a clear day. It is no exaggeration to claim that it is fast attaining the cult status of those fabled two white towers of the first Wembley.

From the clamour of construction a cathedral to football is rising, and the spiritual feeling is heightened - literally - when standing at the top of the fifth tier looking down into the cavern of cacophony.

It is a magnificent undertaking and that verdict is from someone who championed that any new national stadium should have been commissioned more centrally such as in Birmingham so as to afford greater access for the many.

London ultimately won the right to remain at the heart of new Wembley because of its heritage as much as its inherent political and geographical clout. Its victory in rising phoenix-like is to be embraced.

And it's not as if the old has been jettisoned into oblivion as the shock of the new sometimes tends to do.

For all the cutting-edge development there is a quaint attention to detail which harks back to what the best of old Wembley could offer.

When twin towers Wembley was finally demolished a section of its legendary turf was spirited away to a secret location in the North-East of England where a new pitch is currently being nurse-maided to mint-green condition for the new arena.

The tradition of the players walking through the crowd to collect the trophy at the Royal Box will continue, though this time there won't be as many as the original 39 steps on the victory procession to the dignitary of the day.

And then there's the Wembley roar. Ever careful of attention to detail the stadium's constructors employed the sound engineer of U2, presently the world's greatest rock band, to ensure the acoustics in the new Wembley will replicate and maybe even top the crescendo of noise from the old.

So Saturday to Wednesday for that inaugural FA Cup Final? Think again, Sven, think again.

Updated: 10:34 Saturday, February 12, 2005