Both artificial sporting fields and artificial residential turf have been on the market for a while. The material used to create this synthetic grass is constantly improving, resulting in surfaces that are more pleasing to the eye as well as to the touch. However, there are some environments where artificial lawns and turf haven’t received such a warm welcome. One of these is soccer.
There are several stadiums located in Europe that use a natural and artificial turf blend for their “football” teams. This material recently made a debut at this year’s World Cup competition. It seemed that there were plenty of players who had trouble with the change. Because it is so smooth, the way that the ball moved was different than it would have been on natural grass. The faster game led to misjudgments and errors on the part of both teams. There were also players who were noted as saying how strange the playing surface felt to them.
For many sports, artificial turf prices are a great savings over the cost of maintaining a natural grass pitch in an indoor stadium or in more unforgiving climates. However, going with artificial will only work in cases where the change in surface doesn’t affect the play of the game itself. It might be a while yet before a surface is developed that really works for the players and the sport. But considering the advances that have already been made, that might not be a future that’s too far off.
