If cows can’t eat it, soccer shouldn’t be played on it.
So says the sport’s global parent, FIFA.
But instead of playing on grass Saturday night, San Diego FC will be skipping es across synthetic turf in Charlotte, N.C.
The match on fake grass will be a first for the San Diego newbies. Carpet-loving Charlotte FC is 4-0 at home, outscoring opponents 10-2.
Performing well on carpet matters a lot in Major League Soccer and especially for Western Conference-dwelling SDFC because historic Western powerhouses Seattle and Portland have fake-grass fields. So does Vancouver, which leads MLS in points and goals scored.
San Diego’s carpet game may be up to snuff for two reasons.
The franchise’s partner club in Denmark, FC Nordsjælland, is one of only two Danish SuperLiga teams that have a carpeted surface. It competes in the annual El Plastico Cup. Get it? Plastic grass.
Because the SDFC’s team-builders have emphasized fast-paced soccer, the expansion club may not resemble slowpokes on a surface that often — but not always — rewards a quicker game.
“We play a style of football that, actually, turf, especially if it’s watered and it’s playing slick, can help us,” general manager Tyler Heaps said Friday after the team’s brisk workout on Charlotte’s carpet. “The game should be fast, and we want a fast game in of moving the ball and being able to move the opponent around. I still think it’s a game where we’re going to try to take initiative in. We’re going to try to control the ball as well as we have.”
Building an MLS winner requires reading and adapting to a massive variety of variables. Among them are the vast variety of field conditions within a 30-club league that spans from Miami to Vancouver and Montreal to San Diego.
How’s this for granular detail: Heaps gleaned a not-small difference, day to night, in how the ball reacts to Charlotte’s fake grass.
“It’ll be interesting to see how much water goes on the field,” he said. “Luckily we’re playing at night, so I don’t think we have to worry about it drying out as quickly as it has in some games this year. Some games that I have watched this year in Charlotte, it has been slower. Especially later in the half, whenever the sun’s beating down on it and the ball goes over the top and it kind of sticks as opposed to skips.”
SDFC coach Mikey Varas stuck with a fast pace in Friday’s workout in Charlotte FC’s venue, whose primary tenant is the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.
Though Varas shortened the workout to preserve his team’s legs, the 10-on-10 session was full speed, said Heaps.
“We showed today in training that we can do it on any surface,” said Heaps, who pointed out that two of SDFC’s five pitches at its Singing Hills training site are carpeted. “That’s the plan. If it’s slick and the game plays fast, that’s no different from what our team in (Denmark) does. We wet the hell out of (that synthetic turf, to enhance the ball’s speed).”
FIFA requires natural grass for all its World Cup matches but allows temporary hybrid grass surfaces in venues where it’s more challenging to maintain a grass field. So although MLS matches in Seattle and Vancouver will continue to be played on carpet, those two sites will be among the 16 venues for the 2026 World Cup, which will be staged in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Carpeted fields reduce costs in labor and material, improving a stadium’s financial profile. Critics of artificial turf, who include the NFL players’ union, contend the surface is often harder on athletes’ bodies. MLS stars from Europe have been known to skip games on fake grass, saying it’s too hard on their legs. Two months ago, several Brazilian stars, including Neymar, issued a statement denouncing a shift to artificial surfaces in their home country.
“The way I look at turf is that all turf fields aren’t bad and all grass fields aren’t good,” Heaps said. “You look at last weekend in Colorado, (a 3-2 loss to the Rapids), I would say the (grass) field conditions were probably far from ideal, too. Similarly, here, what you can say about turf or astro or whatever you want to call it is, at least it stays true. You don’t have to worry about divots or anything like that.”
If SDFC (4-2-2) is to win the MLS Cup trophy this year, this seems certain: it will have to play well on fake grass during the journey.
