Wembley is Saux good

Graeme Le Saux knows all about scoring at Wembley - now he hopes footballers all over the country will follow his lead.

The former Chelsea and Blackburn left-back's greatest moment in an England shirt came at the old stadium against Brazil on a sunny afternoon on June 1995.

With the two teams locked at 0-0, Le Saux hooked in a majestic strike from 30 yards which dipped over the despairing Zetti in goal. Brazil went on to win the game 3-1 but Le Saux's moment remains a cherished one.

"I'm old school, I loved the old Wembley," said Le Saux, who played 36 times for England. "I grew up watching matches there and it was the ground where we won the World Cup.

"But the new stadium is amazing, incredible. I played in the first game there, it was a charity match. It was fantastic. The two stadiums are almost incomparable but the new one will get better once it's more established and gets its own history. It's still quite new."

Le Saux laced up his boots on Thursday to help launch this year's FA UMBRO Fives, a national five-a-side tournament giving amateur teams the chance to win a place in the final at Wembley Stadium.

"It'll be a real privilege for these guys to play there," added Le Saux, who joined up with last year's winners MDU for a kickabout at a Goals centre near the national stadium.

"It's been excellent. I dusted my boots off and played with the team who won it last year. We won too - who says I've lost my competitive spirit?

"I used to play five-a-side when I was growing up but it was not organised like this one. We did not have pitches, it was more jumpers or mounds of sand for goalposts when we used to play on the beach. Growing up in Jersey was great and outdoor life was very much to the core of that."

While booting a ball around his Channel Island home was a childhood pleasure, five-a-side football was very much part of Le Saux's training as a professional.

"Five-a-side is very important," said the defender, who won the Premier League title with Blackburn.

"You need good control, good movement off the ball and you need to know what to do in tight spaces. It's a good development tool for trying different skills out. The more you practice the better you get. It's a really important part of training."

And who was the best exponent of the small sided game he played with?

"Gianfranco Zola," being Le Saux's swift response. "He was really skilful and good in tight situations. He had an unfair advantage though. Because he was so short a five-a-side pitch seemed like a normal sized pitch for him. But all the players were good."