Soccer is skeptical of many things. Foreign owners, goalline technology, players that refuse to celebrate against a former team, snoods and perhaps most notably artificial turf fields. But Major League Soccer is generally more suspicious on the latter than most. Ask most concerned who or what is North American soccer’s biggest enemy and it would surely be a toss-up between Sepp Blatter and plastic pitches.
While there are numerous nations around the world that debate the top-level suitability of artificial pitches in soccer, MLS perhaps fosters the fiercest such discussion. Plastic fields are derided as a blight on the North American game – and often as a hindrance to the quality of soccer played in its top-flight. Some of the league’s best players – most famously Thierry Henry – rarely played on it, for fear of picking up an injury. In summary, the artificial turf used at five MLS venues is bad for the quality of the game and the health of its players, or so the rhetoric goes.
But that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, there is increasingly an argument to be made that artificial surfaces actually improve the standard of soccer played on it, with the legitimacy of claims over injury issues caused by such pitches also doubted by medical professionals. North American soccer might have it wrong, and there is precedence for MLS to follow on opinion this too.
In Scotland a similar debate persists. While artificial surfaces were once outlawed in the country’s top flight, now there are two Scottish Premiership teams (Kilmarnock and Hamilton Academical) that play on plastic – with countless synthetic fields in use further down the league structure. However, many in Scotland look at the discussion from an alternative perspective – one that isn’t widely argued in North American soccer circles.
Scottish soccer coaches and figures are now considering whether the use of artificial surfaces could actually produce better players, and what’s more a better sporting spectacle - with no bumps and bobbles to spoil a winger’s dribbling run, divert a cross-field pass or bounce a back-pass over a goalkeeper’s foot. Like certain regions of North America, Scotland’s often adverse weather conditions are not completely conducive to the cultivation of first-rate soccer fields. At some stage the standard of groundskeeping becomes an irrelevance - with the pitchfork no match for gale-force wind, torrential rain and heavy snow. It’s little wonder then that clubs have turned to artificial playing surfaces simply to ensure that their games go ahead. But it’s about more than just functionality.
Clamor for the installation of plastic pitches across the country’s top-flight - not just for practical reasons, but aesthetic too – is growing. Such calls have been led by the Norwegian manager of Celtic, Ronny Deila, who believes the league’s quality of play has been hampered by narrow-mindedness over the place of artificial surfaces in the modern game. Scottish FA chief Stewart Regan has even defended the perceived injury record of such fields, tweeting: “There is no evidence from recent research to suggest any link between artificial surface and injury,” before adding the hashtag, “#heretostay” in a supplementary message.
“The pitches in Scotland are terrible,” moaned Deila after one game on an especially stodgy field. “If you want to to develop players and get passing football into your team, it’s difficult when the ball is bouncing all the time. It’s much better to play on an artificial surface than to play on this. If we are going to develop good young players in Scotland you need to have a good surface to play and train on. If not, you just get fighters. If you want skills and technique, you have to play on better surfaces. They are much better in Norway where 60% of our pitches are artificial. Nothing is better than a good grass pitch, but if it’s going to be like this then it’s better to play on artificial.”
Of course, to state that Scottish clubs have installed artificial fields purely to produce better players would be disingenuous. There are still many detractors and generally speaking, the allure of generating some extra revenue through the rental of plastic pitches for community uses explains why so many teams have now gone artificial. It is largely a financial decision.
The same goes for many of the MLS clubs that have turned plastic. At CenturyLink Field the Seattle Sounders play on a FieldTurf surface which also serves as a home field for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. The New England Revolution and the Vancouver Whitecaps also find themselves in similar situations, sharing their home stadiums with football teams - making the installation of synthetic pitches an arrangement of logistical necessity more than anything else.
Perhaps the Whitecaps and BC Place have made the best compromise. As part of the venue’s $150m renovation a soccer-friendly playing surface was insisted on, with a Polytan field - the same kind European superclubs like Bayern Munich train on - installed. It is the most technologically advanced artificial pitch on the market and, according to many plaudits, plays like a grass surface whilst still delivering the benefits of a plastic one - namely the capacity to play around 200 football and soccer games on it every year.
The discourse over the suitability of artificial fields at the top-end of soccer is particularly pertinent this summer. When the Canadian and Chinese national teams walk out at the Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton for the first game of next month’s Women’s World Cup they will find plastic blades and rubber crumb beneath their feet rather than a natural grass pitch. However, it’s not just the opening game that will be played on an artificial surface, but every one of 52 fixtures across the month-long tournament, sparking complaints and even legal action over gender discrimination. After all, not a single men’s World Cup match has been played on anything but a grass field.
In this case such protests seem somewhat justified, given that Canada - the competition’s host nation - could quite easily cultivate six well-kept grass pitches in six different host cities over the summon months of June and July. But as a wider concern, the use of artificial pitches - even at the top level of soccer - makes sense, particularly from the standpoint of the continuity it would provide youth ranks of the sport.
Many coaches believe that for teaching the sport’s fundamentals an artificial pitch is best, with over 90% of US Soccer youth development games played on synthetic surfaces. The majority of organized pick-up games, particularly in inner-city areas, are also played on plastic fields, so why is there such a disconnect between the youth game and the sport’s senior level over them? If players are training on artificial pitches why should is it unreasonable for them to play matches on them?
Memories of the NASL’s rock-solid plastic fields, often laid on bare concrete, still linger hard in North American soccer’s collective psyche – but it should be noted just how much progress has been made in the development of artificial playing surfaces in the time since. Spartak Moscow has played Champions League games on artificial turf at the Luzhniki Stadium, with Euro 2008 fixtures also played on Polyan surfaces in Austria. MLS might not like synthetic surfaces, but – as Scotland is coming round to – should accept that in some cases they are the best thing for it, both logistically and aesthetically. The grass isn’t necessarily greener on a grass field.
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