WORLD CUP GRASS

Denmark on home turf in South Africa

Coaches, players and fans demand a lot where the turf on a football pitch is concerned. A Danish company is supplying the turf for the FIFA Word Cup in South Africa, and it is something of an art to produce a playing surface that can handle all the action

By Henrik Nordskilde

On a late November day in 2009 jubilation erupted at the headquarters of the Danish company DLF-Trifolium in Roskilde to the west of Copenhagen. The news that the company had won the contract to supply the turf for the upcoming FIFA World Cup spread like wildfire around the building. The result of much preparatory work, the task is one that players and coaches will appreciate if the blades of grass can handle the important task they face: to maintain their beautiful green colour, and spring straight back up after they have been trodden on.

The former Danish national team player Henrik Larsen is in no doubt about the value of a pitch where players can rely on the ball not suddenly veering off course.

”The condition of the pitch is vital to the game. Naturally it will depend on how the team wants to play, but if you are going to have decent football, the pitch is important. If the tactic is to play a tight passing game rather than booting long balls upfield, it creates risks if the pitch is bad. If the ball hits a divot and bounces off a player’s shin so that it runs straight to an opponent, it can be dangerous. Many goals have been scored from this kind of situation,” says Henrik Larsen.

He played in Denmark, Italy, England and Germany, was in the team when Denmark won the European Championship in 1992, and has since worked as a coach both in Denmark and for the Faroese national team.

Spectators at a football match can sometimes see the players walking casually around the pitch before changing into their
kit and starting their warming-up routines. Part of the ’ritual’ is to enable the players to check out their workplace for the next couple of hours. During his playing career, Henrik Larsen did this pre-match walk many times.

”Before the match you check on whether you need long or short studs on your boots. You need to be sure that you won’t slip. And you examine whether the pitch is wet or lumpy. Pitches can vary a lot from place to place. When I played in Italy, we didn’t have particularly good practice pitches, but I have for example visited Arsenal in Premier League, where they had extremely good practice pitches. I think there is generally more focus on this now.”

DLF-Trifolium

Employs around 650 people and has test stations/subsidiaries in the Netherlands, USA, Germany, Britain, Russia, China, Czech Republic, New Zealand, France and South America. At the test stations, the grass seed is sown in plots of 1 square metre, and growth is monitored. The company has a 50 per cent share of the European market and a 20 per cent share of the world market. Customers cover several segments: agriculture, hobby, lawns and professional grass surfaces, including for sport. It takes 12-13 years to develop a new grass variety, where species are cross-bred and tested until the grass has the right properties.

Grass seed goes to ’training camp’

For the organisers of the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the pitch will certainly be a focus area. The playing surface is like the referee: it attracts most attention when it is not all right. So there must be nothing about the pitches at the 10 stadiums which will be used during the FIFA World Cup, that one can point a finger at. The grass must be hard-wearing enough for playing football and look good to the spectators and the hundreds of millions of viewers who will follow the 64 matches on TV – from the opening match on 11 June between South Africa and Mexico until the final on 11 July.

But these are tough conditions for the grass which will have to cope with thousands of studded steps, tussles and tackles. Some of the pitches are in shadow for a large part of the day, while others get the sun, and there can be great climatic differences in South Africa, where some parts of the country have night frost in June and July. The grass will have to handle all these challenges.

The natural varieties of grass in South Africa are not suitable for the FIFA World Cup since they go into a dormant state during the South African winter and lose some of their green colour and wearability. So it has been a long and important process to find grass that suits both the climate and the demands of the FIFA World Cup. Suppliers from around the world have sent grass seed to a South African expert selected by FIFA. Since 2007, he has had the grass seed in a form of ’training camp’. The seed has been sown on small areas for the expert to assess which varieties best suit the conditions in South Africa. The process of perfecting something as seemingly mundane as grass demonstrates that there are big differences between grass surfaces, despite the fact that football pitches and golf courses look the same on TV.

”The varieties are chosen on the basis of which diseases they must withstand, the climate, wearability, and how fast they grow. We test them with a kind of football boot machine in the form of a roller that is pulled behind a tractor,” says Søren Halbye, sales and marketing director at DLF-Trifolium.

DLF-Trifolium’s competences in grass for professional sports pitches have come from experience gained with many sports arenas around the world, where the company has provided playing surfaces for golf, tennis and rugby as well as courses for horse racing. Some of the highest profile arenas are the home turf for the English Premier League clubs Manchester United, Chelsea and Aston Villa, the US baseball team Los Angeles Dodgers and the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland.

Priceless marketing value

Football coaches expect a lot from a modern football pitch, as do other events that expose the turf to wear. So the job of a groundsman is not without its problems. The pitch at Denmark’s national stadium in Copenhagen has been criticised several times by coaches and players, and the groundsman of one of the sport’s big cathedrals, Wembley Stadium in London, has also learned that there is considerable focus on the grass when it is the playing surface of the world’s most popular sport. Since Wembley went through its difficult rebirth, where the GBP 750 million it cost to rebuild was higher than expected, the playing surface has been the target of criticism by, among others, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger and Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson.

The surface had became worn from all the concerts, races and other events which were necessary to recover the large investment, and the turf had to be replaced six times in the first two years after the rebuild. Because of the major focus on the grass and what is expected of the pitch, most football clubs around the world today employ professional staff to make sure that the pitch both looks good and can cope with the heavy fixture programme.

At Aston Villa Football Club in England, DLF-Trifolium has met a person who shares its professional passion for grass. The club’s groundsman Jonathan Calderwood looks after several practice pitches, which are frequently cut so that they resemble the home pitch of the next opponent. In that way, Aston Villa’s players can practice before an away match on a surface similar to the one they will experience at the opponent’s stadium. Naturally, there is also a practice pitch that corresponds to the pitch at Aston Villa’s own stadium. Once a year, the grass on each practice pitch is removed and reseeded to ensure fresh new turf for the players.

A dream partner for a manufacturer of grass seed, with huge PR value which is only exceeded by a FIFA World Cup. The financial details of the agreement is secret, but there can hardly be any doubt that the tournament in South Africa will have priceless marketing value for DLF-Trifolium.

”It’s very easy to explain to customers what you can do when you have gained such a project,” says Søren Halbye.

Although the grass seed comes from a Danish company the Danish players cannot count on grass being specially selected for Denmark’s style of play.

”The Danish team is in a way ’on home turf’, but it is no more than that.”

Laying a FIFa World cup pitch

In January and February, a mixture of grass seed was sown on the FIFA World Cup pitches to form the hard-wearing-foundation. In May and June, a single, rapid-growing grass variety will be sown which will ensure that the turf will look green and attractive for the start of the tournament. The Danish national team will be going to the FIFA World Cup for the fourth time, but it is the first time there will be Danish grass under the players’ feet.