A long time ago, English football was notorious for pitches that became autumnal mud baths,
froze hard in midwinter, and then became cracked bare earth during late spring heat waves.
All of which was bad for player’s bodies, bad for passing football and bad for business.
In an effort to keep playing in the depths of winter clubs would cover their pitch with
thousands of bales of straw and warm it with braziers. Neither worked very well.
In the great freeze of 1963 Halifax Town gave up completely
and just turned the Shay Stadium into a public ice rink.
Everton were the first club to try and tackle the problem, installing electrical under pitch heating
in 1958. The heating was great, but the huge body of water released by melting ice overwhelmed the
primitive drainage system of Goodison Park. Both heating wires and drains had to be removed and
the whole thing started all over again. All of which was expensive, and few clubs followed suit.
In the early 1970s Leicester City experimented with the Polyspehre - a
huge inflated poly tunnel placed over the pitch and warmed by fan heaters. In the 1980s QPR,
Luton Town, Oldham and Preston installed the second generation of artificial turf.
One step up for the original astroturf developed in the USA in the 1960s,
2G pitches were criticised for the uneven and excessive bounce,
unfair home advantage and skin burns. They were banned by the Football League in 1995.
Nearly thirty years later, though, the English football pitch has been transformed.
New money, new horticulture techniques,
driven by coaches’ demand for fast football and broadcasters for pristine grass,
have ensured that, the pitches of the Premier League are flat and fast all year round.
So how to make the perfect football pitch?
First things first, clear and level your site, lay a permeable membrane and deep drainage pipes.
Then, cover with a free draining substrates of sand and gravel, and ensure it is level.
2. Heating
Unlike the first generation of heating pipes, that were either on or off,
everywhere or nowhere, today’s systems can heat different parts of the pitch,
to different temperatures at different times.
Together with pitch wide heat sensors,
the system can be turned up to stimulate growth in areas that are harder worn,
or experiencing lower temperatures; and turned down where the grass is growing too quickly.
You might even want to add an additional set of piping above this for automatic irrigation
and pipes, too, for your automatic sprinklers.
3. Substrate
Now cover your piping and your drains with a substrate of sand and gravel, topped up with sandy
clean soil, say 20 cm deep. Then get it absolutely flat and – at last – you’re ready for some grass.
4.Turf
You can grow your pitch from scratch in the stadium, but better to leave this
to the experts. The firms that specialise in growing, cutting and laying football pitch turf.
If it’s cold, choose a cool-season species like perennial ryegrass or
Kentucky bluegrass. In the tropics go for bermuda grass, zoysias or seashore paspalum.
Perhaps experiment with the new varieties that have been developed to cope better with shade,
row at higher shoot density, or have been bred for faster recovery after cutting and playing.
Wait 14 months for your turf to be grown, cut, folded and delivered and then, at lightning speed,
lay it and leave at least a metre beyond where the goal and touch lines will be.
Close the gaps between the sods, roll them flat, water, and let it settle.
5. Stitching
Even turf as high quality as this breaks apart under constant use. So, to make it more resilient,
polyethylene fibres are woven into the turf and its substrate by a fleet of
electric stitching machines. Making up about 3 per cent of the surface area of the pitch,
around 2 million fibres are sent 20 cm below the pitch and threaded back
up again. The roots of the natural grass then grow around them, anchoring them into the soil.
6. Maintenance
Now your pitch is laid, you need to look after it.
Stadiums are enclosed spaces, so the air circulates slowly and wind is rare,
and both are bad for grass. It becomes “lazy” - wilting and falling over.
So, you’ll be needing a set of very large fans blowing over your turf.
Light and slow growth can be a problem too, especially on the parts of the pitch
shaded by the stadium’s roof and stands. Huge lighting rigs are your answer, and the kind of
software that can alter the intensity of light falling on the turf as the rigs move across it.
Now your grass is growing nicely, but so too are mosses, fungi and lateral grass roots, so
sweep them out with a scarification machine. Top spread regularly with fertilisers, adapted to the
condition of the turf and climate: Add sand and fine soil particles to keep the turf topped up
and when you need to, reseed worn areas, maybe three times a season. Finally, keep your turf open
to air currents and water flows, by punching small holes into the surface, manually and mechanically.
7. Mowing
Now for the best bit: Modern mowers are accurate to within a single mm.
UEFA specifies pitches should be 24-28 mm for its tournaments,
but some coaches and clubs prefer it even shorter, for super quick ball movement.
Either way, don’t cut the grass down all in one go. If you do, it will weaken the turf
and some of it will turn yellow. So, take off 2mm each day using your big rotary mowers and
aim to take off the last 2mm on the morning of match day, using old school pedestrian mowers -
Oh..and chose your mowing pattern and keep to it. As grass blades are matt on one side and glossy on
the other, the direction in which they are mowed produces the characteristically different tones of
a chequerboard pitch. Or in the case of Leicester City in the 2010s …diagonals and diamonds
But no more. FIFA, UEFA and the Premier league have got
much stricter and permit only horizontal and vertical stripes
Now add pitch markings - two coats a minimum - put up the goals and nets, and you’re ready to go.