• England's new manager visits prospective headquarters
• Hodgson to announce Euro 2012 squad next week
Roy Hodgson visited England's prospective new headquarters, St George's Park, for the first time on Wednesday as the manager considers his options ahead of the formal announcement next Wednesday of his squad for next month's European Championship.
Hodgson, who remains as West Bromwich Albion's head coach until after Sunday's final Premier League game against Arsenal, will reveal his 23-man party a fortnight ahead of the deadline. He can tweak his squad before Uefa's cut-off of 29 May should players be rendered unavailable. The 64-year-old will explain the reasoning behind his selection at a media conference at Wembley next week, with issues still to be resolved including whether both John Terry and Rio Ferdinand can be included in the party.
Terry is due to appear at Westminster magistrates' court on 9 July to answer a charge of racially abusing Ferdinand's younger brother, Anton, during Chelsea's defeat at Queens Park Rangers last October. He strenuously denies the charge, but the decision to delay the trial until after Euro 2012 – made largely at Chelsea's request – has presented England with a dilemma. Rio Ferdinand is understood to want to represent his country in Poland and Ukraine, though the issue remains potentially divisive within the dressing room. Hodgson intends to speak to both players before announcing his squad, though those conversations may have to wait until he formally takes up the reins with the national team on Monday.
The manager, who spent much of last week at his new office at Wembley, visited St George's Park in Burton accompanied by the Football Association's head of football development, Sir Trevor Brooking, but will on Thursday revert to his duties with West Brom ahead of Sunday's visit of Arsenal to The Hawthorns.
The England squad will convene on 21 May and travel to Málaga for a five-day training camp, then on to Oslo for a friendly against Norway on 26 May. Time has been integrated within the schedule for players to spend with their families before Belgium visit Wembley on 2 June, with the squad due to travel to their base in Krakow on 6 June.
The FA hopes to have appointed a technical director by the time the tournament begins next month, with up to six candidates who have applied from across Europe to be interviewed by Brooking and the general secretary, Alex Horne. Gareth Southgate, the FA's head of elite development, remains the favourite to secure the role, which will be based at St George's Park and will involve smoothing the implementation of the controversial new elite player performance plan across club academies.
Wembley will host its 100th major football match since reopening in 2007 this weekend when Dunston UTS face West Auckland Town in the final of the FA Vase, with the national stadium confident it can withstand the challenge to be posed by the Olympic arena across the capital in the years to come. Over 10 million customers have attended events at the stadium over those five years – a figure reached at Chelsea's FA Cup semi-final against Tottenham Hotspur last month – but, while Wembley's managing director, Roger Maslin, conceded the new ground in Stratford would constitute "the shiny new kid on the block", he stressed that Wembley "retains our proper vision as being the best entertainment venue in the world".
Club Wembley's £50m revenue stream remains healthy despite the economic downturn, with a 98% renewal rate on seats and 90% of the inventory sold for the 17,000 Club Wembley debenture holders. "The Olympic stadium is there, but it will merely push us on to do better," said Wembley Stadium's chairman, Melvin Benn. "The best stadium experience in the world will continue to be delivered at Wembley." Read More
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