Varsity And England Football At Bargain Prices

Fry and Laurie would be working themselves up into a right old state about the opportunities available to the capital's football watchers over the next few days. It's not every day that you can pitch up at the turnstiles of the new Wembley Stadium and buy a ticket to watch the England team in action as its stalwart, David Beckham, makes history, but that could happen later today as FA supremos grapple with the technical and PR side of such a move against the reports that there are around 10,000 seats still available for today's 5:15pm friendly against Slovakia. Indeed, tickets priced at £30 are already available to the general public online and they won't even have to jump through the standard hoop of joining the FA's club, englandfans, to get them. Seats would usually go for almost twice that, but Wembley still has to be paid for and banks of empty red plastic doesn't set the right tone for a team still trying to feel more like the home team than visitors.

The FA is also keen to get more fans in to Wednesday night's World Cup qualifier against the Ukraine, but you still currently have to go through their official site and procedures to get those. Prices start from £29 and go up to £58.50.

An even cheaper afternoon could be had at Fulham's Craven Cottage tomorrow where, for £15, you could have a ringside seat at two significant sporting confrontations. Unusually for this country, the football match will be playing second fiddle as it's the Varsity tussle between Oxford and Cambridge Universites which these days functions as a curtain raiser for the world famous rowing race that just happens to storm past the ground in its early stages. The football gets cracking at a vicar unfriendly 11:30am, meaning that that spectacle should be over well before 2pm, leaving a couple of hours to get comfortable on the club's exclusive outside terrace enjoying the preliminary races before the main event comes into view just before 4pm. If you only want the footy, the entry price is a mere £8.

However, even that generous deal is put in the shade by our football bargain of the week, if not the year, which comes at 7pm on Tuesday evening at Loftus Road, home of Queens Park Rangers, where £5 (£3 in advance) will get you in to see England's very occasional Under 20s play their Italian counterparts in a reprise of last summer's European Championship qualifier between the two squads. Londonist was very enthusiastic about this group of England players when we saw them at Under 17 level against the USA. Of that group, Theo Walcott has quickly become a household name, but surely the imperious James Tomkins of West Ham cannot be far behind him as in recent weeks he's been showing his quality in cementing a first team place with the Hammers. Three years ago we compared him to Rio Ferdinand and Bobby Moore and these days we see him as a future full England captain. Daniel Sturridge is also a top quality player who may soon grace a London club's first team strike force if Manchester City's mega millions price him out of a chance at Eastlands.

West Ham will provide forward Freddie Sears to the squad as well, but their contingent is outnumbered by the Chelsea trio of Ryan Bertrand, Jack Cork and the livewire Scott Sinclair, while Arsenal and Fulham provide a player each in Kieran Gibbs and Chris Smalling respectively. See them all now and brag about it to your friends when they're the core of the 2014 World Cup squad.