For elite women soccer players, the artificial grass is not always greener

When players win a soccer tournament, they may credit many things — their teammates, the passion of the fans, a sense of collective destiny. But the surface it’s played on?

Yet when the U.S. women’s team won the CONCACAF Championship in Philadelphia recently, its star striker, Abby Wambach, who scored four goals in the final against Costa Rica, used her media appearance afterward to claim, “We had a fantastic tournament in terms of the grass.”

Far from singling out an obscure facet of game play, Wambach was making a very deliberate statement, one that may have ramifications for the Women's World Cup in Canada next year, for which the U.S. women qualified with their victory in Philadelphia. An intriguing precedent could be set for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world soccer governing body, to be called to legal account in a manner it has historically avoided.

Wambach is perhaps the highest-profile member of a coalition of over 60 top female players who have filed a sex discrimination case against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA). The case claims that the artificial surfaces that the CSA has chosen for next year’s tournament represent a “game-changing, dangerous and demeaning” alternative to grass. It also alleges discrimination, since such an alternative would likely never be proposed for the men’s World Cup.

The main lawyer for the plaintiffs, Hampton Dellinger of law firm Boies, Schiller and Flexner, insists that the case has every chance of success. Legal experts who have weighed in believe there’s at least a case to answer on the basis of discrimination, even if the case subsequently becomes largely a technical debate on whether grass is inferior to turf.

In one emotive statement given to the Globe and Mail when the case was launched, Margot Young, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, said, “It’s like saying to Olympic hockey players, ‘Men, you play on ice. Women, you play on slush.’ There’s concrete harm and symbolic harm, like harm to dignity. It’s not hard to see the discrimination here. You don’t have to go to subtle impact or indirect effects. It’s clear. For elite men, they did one thing. For elite women, something else.”

Earlier this month the vice chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, Jo-Anne Pickel, declined the players’ request for a fast-track hearing (one they sought, given the short time available for remedial action before next year’s tournament) but offered early mediation between them and the CSA, only for the CSA to reject that option. The players in turn contend that the CSA misled them into backing the bid process for the World Cup by letting them believe the tournament would be played on grass. They have produced what they call a Pitch Perfect proposal to cover the artificial surfaces at the tournament venues with grass, at an estimated cost of about $2 million.

As arcane as some of the details of the case seem, it exposes some of the cultural fault lines in contemporary soccer and its administration, not least the institutional sexism that the players contend is behind the decision to play on an inferior surface. The CSA argues that it was rushed into hosting the tournament and that the artificial surfaces were the only viable option, with no viable plan B. The players counter that the bid had long been in the works and that there was plenty of time to put adequate provisions in place. They are pushing again for a fast-track hearing.

At the case’s core is the way the game is played and how the surface affects that. Dellinger said that his interest in the case was partly fueled by growing up in the soccer hotbed of Chapel Hill (which produced soccer legend Mia Hamm) in North Carolina and enjoying the drama of the 2011 Women’s World Cup, in which the U.S. reached the final. “So when I heard that this tournament wasn’t going to be played on grass,” he said, “it just seemed so wrong on so many levels and resonated personally with me.”

As for how artificial turf changes the game, players have different takes. Goalkeeper Hope Solo has stated that artificial turf is too unpredictable. “The ball might come at a different pace. It’s never consistent. The bounce is never consistent, how it’s going to skip. It takes away my ability to read the ball. I’m not as confident playing on turf,” she said.

For Megan Rapinoe, whose cross for a Wambach goal in the last minute of injury time in a knockout game against Brazil was one of the iconic moments of the last World Cup, artificial turf means changing the personal game that brought her renown. “It plays totally different. You have to scoop [the ball] instead of chip. Your touch is different. The way you dribble is different,” she said.

While there are some contradictions among players’ accounts of FieldTurf, there are certain constants relating to the abrasive nature of the surface, which were highlighted in a popular Kobe Bryant tweet that recently circulated in support of the women’s campaign to play on grass showed the bloodied and scraped legs of U.S. player Sydney Leroux after a game on artificial turf. Anti-turf lobbyists also claim that there is an increased risk of MRSA infection from turf burns.

Other health issues are linked to artificial turf. It also retains heat far more than grass, raising field level temperatures to levels that can be dangerous for players. One study, carried out by Brigham Young University, claimed that the surface temperature of synthetic turf at its practice field was 37 degrees higher than the air temperature.

There is even a growing lobby of players who argue that the materials used in most artificial surfaces bring long-term health risks in their own right, with possible exposure to lead, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and selenium.

In particular the rubber pellets that give many of the 11,000 artificial fields in the U.S. their bounce have recently come under scrutiny for possible links to truly serious health issues, even if the evidence is so far largely anecdotal rather than scientific. Most notably, a University of Washington coach, Amy Griffin, has kept a tally of 38 players who have contracted cancer, 34 of whom are goalkeepers who spend a lot of time diving on the turf. 

However, the case has not registered as more than a blip with FIFA, if its total lack of response to the case or willingness to comment is any indication. But the presence of FIFA as a co-defendant gives the case one of its most intriguing aspects, particularly on the question of jurisdiction. FIFA has historically consolidated power by insisting on universal jurisdiction on the running of the game and has extended its influence to demanding nations suspend core sovereign powers over say, taxation, in return for their hosting the men’s World Cup.

But now the human rights case brought by the footballers from the Women's World Cup is only one such campaign seeking to call FIFA to account in the courts. A case is being considered in a California court in relation to FIFA’s concussion policies. In recent days the news that the FBI bugged former CONCACAF executive Chuck Blazer suggests federal action could be a possibility if his recordings reveal evidence of corruption. Technically, the long-standing claims that FIFA members were given bribes during the run-up to the vote that gave Qatar the World Cup could mean that the State Department may get involved because of the alleged use of U.S. dollars.

Despite the global context, the players and their lawyers insist their court case is meant to be a last resort, especially with their proposed modestly priced solution on the table.

In Philadelphia after the CONCACAF final, Wambach was looking forward to next year and a chance to win a trophy she has never won, in what’s been a record-breaking career. For her, playing on grass was the most authentic expression of the game she loves, for both player and spectator.

“It’s one thing to come off the field and you’re bloody from a turf field, and it’s another thing to come off the field and look down at your socks, look down at your shorts and it’s grass stains,” she said. “There’s just something to be said for playing in stadiums that appeal to not only the actual player but the fan. For me, I’m just hopeful that we can get a win in court in terms of this lawsuit and that we can be playing on grass next summer.”