It has been two years since Sydney Leroux offered up the most graphic argument she could muster against playing soccer on artificial turf, posting a photo of her shredded legs following a game on fake grass.
This is why soccer should be played on grass! pic.twitter.com/fsNGi27oRY
— Sydney Leroux Dwyer (@sydneyleroux) April 15, 2013The United States forward and her peers figure to have enough pictures like this to overwhelm an Instagram account by the time the Women's World Cup final is played July 5. All 52 matches of the tournament, to be played at six stadiums across Canada, will be contested on artificial turf.
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That's a first for any World Cup, and the participants are none too pleased about it. Dozens of high-level players from a variety of countries filed a lawsuit against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) last year in Ontario, accusing the governing bodes of gender discrimination and demanding to have the games played on grass.
FIFA showed no interest in budging on the issue and the players, lacking leverage, eventually dropped their case in January. But bitterness remains.
"I’m not going to dwell on this, but I’m also not going to drop it, because it needs to be said," U.S. midfielder Megan Rapinoe wrote last month for The Players' Tribune. "This will be the first global football tournament played entirely on artificial turf. FIFA made a $338 million profit on the 2014 Men’s World Cup. To say that it’s not logistically possible to install real grass at all the stadiums is not acceptable, in my opinion. We have played on grass all our lives. Now we’re going to compete at the highest level on a different surface. I think it has a lot of implications."
Those include the artificial pitch's effect on teams' style of play, but the primary concern is injury. Though FIFA has rolled out expert after expert to assert that the injury risk is no different on turf than on natural grass, Leroux and Co. would beg to differ. Beyond the inherent harshness of an artificial surface compared to well-tended grass, there's a matter of what lies underneath. Cushion is a significant concern for players as they run up and down the pitch, and on occasion, crash into it.
While the risk of a catastrophic injury — torn knee ligaments, say — might not necessarily be higher, there are big questions about wear and tear over the course of the tournament. Should the U.S. team make the final, it would play seven games in 28 days. Cut that span to 27 days for contenders France and Brazil, who open play a day later. That's quite a bit of pounding over a compressed time period.
For its part, FIFA essentially has argued that the players knew what they were getting into. Artificial surfaces were part of Canada's pitch to host from the very beginning, five years ago. As there were no other viable contenders — Zimbabwe initially put forth a bid, but dropped out — this was simply the way it was going to be.
So why go with artificial turf in the first place? Because in most cases, that's what was there. Many outdoor stadiums in Canada have artificial surfaces because the climate is so harsh for much of the year and the facilities are used for other sports, like football, where the difference between natural and artificial isn't considered as important a factor. Every Canadian Football League team currently plays its home games on turf.
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Perhaps most galling to the players is that one of the six host venues, Moncton Stadium in New Brunswick, opened in 2010 with a grass field but was forced to install FieldTurf last year to play host to World Cup games. Though that $1.5 million artificial surface meets FIFA requirements, it would prevent some other competitions, such as Paralympic track and field, from being held at the stadium. So the city of Moncton spent $500,000 to install a new grass field adjacent to the stadium for the other athletes affected by the change.
FIFA explained the Moncton mandate by saying it wanted all games in the tournament played on the same surface, and that surface would be the predominant one already in place in Canada.
"As has already been explained, this is not a question of money, or of differences between men’s and women’s events," FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said last fall, "but it is a matter of the natural conditions in Canada: We want to guarantee consistent top-level playing conditions for all 24 teams during the event, both in the official stadiums and at the training sites. This has been the sole reason behind the decision to play on artificial turf from day one."
But even if the playing field is level in that sense, the players need only look at their male counterparts to reinforce the notion that they still have some ground to make up when it comes to how their concerns are viewed by the powers that be.
If nothing else, though, the younger players who will endure the cuts, scrapes and burns of plastic grass over the next month can take solace in the knowledge that the 2019 Women's World Cup in France will be played entirely on nice, green grass.
