Women’s World Cup 2015 – Artificial Turf?

In 2015, from June 6th to July 5th the Women’s World Cup will be visiting Canada and hopefully, I’ll also be visiting Canada for the tournament. This sporting event always engulfs my life when it comes around, but something that is really odd to me is the idea of playing on artificial turf.

I have played on many different types of artificial turf during my playing days ranging from what can only be described as carpet rolled out on concrete to the rubber tires chopped up and placed under some plastic grass. I’ve never been a fan of it. If you play in the summer, the turf absorbs the sun and your feet get unbelievably hot. A lot of cleats are pretty thin, so the material does not protect your feet from the piping hot, black rubber absorbing all of the sun’s heat.

The carpet rolled out on concrete feels pretty awful considering you do a lot of slide tackling, falling, quick turning and as a goalkeeper, diving to make saves. During this tournament, you play a lot of soccer in a short period of time, which means that if you get an injury due to the artificial turf, you have no time to recover because the tournament will be over by the time you recover.

Alex Morgan on the idea of playing on artificial turf…

“Two main reasons stick out to me,” Morgan said. “The first is that many of the injuries I’ve had in the past have come from artificial turf. Injury prevention is a big thing for me. The second thing is the game is played differently. The bounce on the surface is different, and a lot of players don’t play the same way on turf as on grass, because they don’t want to go down for a slide tackle or do a diving header.” ( Sports Illustrated, http://tinyurl.com/mxqaxmq)

I would also like to point out that this would be the first ever world cup soccer tournament to be played on artificial turf if FIFA has their way. There is clearly a reason why it’s never been played on turf and why it never should be played on turf. It just does not make sense to put these athletes in a dangerous situation and I could not imagine being in their shoes.

The level of intensity of a professional soccer game is so high that my experience as a youth athlete cannot even compare to how horrid turf would be on these players’ bodies. I’m not in favor of any athlete playing on artificial turf for such a high intensity tournament with a lot of games packed into a short time period.

The ladies have caused also quite a social media stir as well with Kobe Bryant and Tom Hanks showing their support for the cause.

I will be watching this story as it develops very closely. I am rooting for the women on this and would like to kindly ask FIFA to put in some grass, please. 🙂