What goes behind the growing the perfect grass pitch for the FIFA World Cup? NPR’s Scott Simon speaks to John Sorochan of the University of Tennessee, the man in charge of delivering these fields.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The World Cup is already here this summer for some grass-growing scientists at the University of Tennessee. They’re trying to make 16 fields across Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into a – into the perfect expanse of green grass on which to play the beautiful game. John Sorochan is a professor of turfgrass science at University of Tennessee at Knoxville and in charge of designing and growing the grass fields for the World Cup. He joins us now from Knoxville. Thanks so much for being with us.
JOHN SOROCHAN: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: And please start by letting us know what the standards are for a FIFA pitch, a playing ground.
SOROCHAN: They all have to be natural grass surfaces constructed out of a sand root zone, and that sand root zone has to have an irrigation system. And at the bottom of it, it has to have a drainage layer that also can be hooked up to what we call a vacuum ventilation system. So if you’re in a stadium where it’s experiencing a lot of rainfall, that sand is going to drain pretty well, but at the same time, they can pull on a vacuum and pull the excess moisture out. So those are some of the requirements that FIFA has.
And then other ones are that they have to have hybrid stabilization. So being constructed out of sand, they come in and they stitch in plastic fibers that comprise about 5% of the surface area, but they’re below the canopy of the grass. So what the athletes are playing on is grass, but those fibers kind of act as rebar to stabilize that sand, so you don’t get big blowouts or big divots and things like that happening. And then they also require grow lights to help the grass grow ’cause these stadiums can produce a lot of shade, especially the five dome stadiums.
SIMON: Are the pictures supposed to be the same from Canada to Mexico?
SOROCHAN: Yes. The charge that FIFA gave the University of Tennessee and me to do this was to try to provide all 16 stadiums in a, you know, massive geographic environment in terms of climates, growing environments to indoor stadiums, to be consistent and uniform. We know that we have different types of grasses that grow in the south, where it’s really hot, like Miami, versus what would grow in Toronto. So we have two different types of grasses, warm-season and cool-season grasses, that are being used. And our research has been, how do we make these grasses that are different perform and play as close to the same when it’s the athlete running and cutting to the ball bouncing and rolling on the surface.
SIMON: Our friends at the NewsHour did a story in which I saw some video of some of the machines you use. For example, you’ve got a mechanical foot, don’t you?
SOROCHAN: Yes. And that’s one of the machines that we actually invented here at the University of Tennessee. And what it does is it simulates a foot strike. It’s a 3D-printed foot, and we can put on a cleat for soccer players, and we can simulate the impact of a 168-pound soccer player, which is the average weight of the last two men’s World Cups. And we’ve used that as our standard for looking at the different surfaces and trying to get that consistency, uniformity.
SIMON: And is the whole idea to keep all these millionaire, world-class athletes from twisting an ankle?
SOROCHAN: What we want to do is, you know, keep the fields from players obviously twisting an ankle and getting hurt, but we want the flow of the game to be where at the outcome of the game, they don’t want to say, hey, that field was bad or something like that. We want the outcome to be what a wonderful, beautiful game that we got to watch. And, you know, the best pitch is the one that’s often not talked about after the game, unless they talk about how beautiful it looked.
SIMON: Do you follow the World Cup? Do you follow big-time soccer, Mr. Sorochan?
SOROCHAN: I do. I’m an avid fan, and I’m a Canadian, so I’ll be cheering for several teams, including Canada.
SIMON: Can you watch the game without looking at the grass a little more closely than the rest of us? Let me put it that way.
SOROCHAN: (Laughter) Not really. It’s – and I’ve actually ruined it for a lot of people, even ’cause of what I do. And then people – more I talk to them, they’re like – they call me and say, you know, I was trying to enjoy this game, and now I’m looking at the grass as well. I’m always looking at both.
SIMON: And I have to ask in closing. I mean, it’s summer. Not everybody can afford the kind of methods that you’ve been deploying to make the World Cup pitches. What about someone who’s mowing their grass as they listen to our show today? Any advice?
SOROCHAN: Yeah. Really, when it comes down to it, it’s just growing grass. And, you know, mowing a little bit of fertilization, making sure you have some irrigation, some sunlight for the grass to grow, and a little bit of fertilizer. And the more you mow – you know, what’s unique about grass is that it actually responds and will fill in and become thicker the more you mow it. Don’t mow it too short. And yeah. So you should have a nice, healthy lawn. And, you know, that’s one of the things that we want is a nice legacy of that. We get this high-level fields for World Cup, but a lot of the science that we’ve done going into this is going to have a trickle-down effect to make all levels of sport fields safer and better and higher performing for even the children playing on them.
SIMON: John Sorochan is a professor of turfgrass science – I never knew that specialty existed – at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Thanks so much for being with us and a good World Cup to you, sir.
SOROCHAN: Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHICANO BATMAN SONG, “I KNOW IT”)
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