On This Day – 22nd July
Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium hosted its first ever match on this day back in 2006 after spending 93 years at their iconic Highbury Stadium.
The inaugural match at the Emirates was Dennis Bergkamp’s Testimonial, in a match against Ajax. The first half was between the first teams of both two sides and the second half was played between sides made up of legends from both clubs.
A 45 minute opening ceremony for the new stadium preceded the game and the game started with a kick off between Bergkamp, his father and son.
Arsenal won the game, courtesy of two second half goals from Thierry Henry and Kanu after Klaas Jan Huntelaar opened the scoring for Ajax in the 37th minute.
The teams that played in this historic game were:
First-half Arsenal: Manuel Almunia, Justin Hoyte, Pascal Cygan, Matthew Connolly, Armand Traore; Alex Hleb, Alex Song, Mathieu Flamini, Ryan Smith; Dennis Bergkamp, Jeremie Aliadiere
Second-half Arsenal squad: David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn, Steve Bould, Gilles Grimandi, Marc Overmars, Emmanuel Petit, Edu, Ray Parlour; Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Ian Wright, Oleg Luzhny, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Alex Manninger, Patrick Vieira, Glenn Helder, Kanu.
First-half Ajax: Maarten Stekelenburg, Zdenek Grygera, John Heitinga, Jaap Stam, Thomas Vermaelen, Hedwiges Maduro, Kenneth Perez, Wesley Sneijder, Jan Vertonghen, Tom de Mul, Klaas Jan Huntelaar.
Second-half Ajax squad: Edwin Van der Sar, Stanley Menzo, Danny Blind, Wim Jonk, Frank de Boer, Marciano Vink, Aron Winter, Ronald de Boer, Edgar Davids, Jan Wouters, Stefan Pettersson, Bryan Roy, Johan Cruyff, Frank Rijkaard, Marco Van Basten.
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