By Heather Monahan
Features Assignment Editor
Anyone who has ever played sports knows how devastating injuries can be.
With recent injuries such as Kevin Ware’s broken leg, sports federations should be doing their best to prevent injuries during major sporting events.
However, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) recently caught attention for doing the opposite.
In 2011, FIFA named Canada as the official host country of the 2015 Women’s World Cup. On March 21, FIFA, along with the Canadian Soccer Association, announced the schedule for the World Cup. While the schedule was a highly anticipated announcement, one thing drew the most attention: five of the six venues have artificial turf fields.
BC Place, located in Vermont, is one of the turf venues and will be the arena for the World Cup final game. The 2015 World Cup final will be the first time a championship soccer game, men’s or women’s, will be played on a non-grass surface.
Members of the United States women’s national soccer team (USWNT) wasted no time publicly expressing their disapproval of the decision. Abby Wambach, forward for the USWNT, immediately spoke with several news sources.
“It wrecks your body and changes the way the game is played,” Wambach said, according to USA Today, on March 27.
Though it may just be coincidental, most of the USWNT players have blamed the problem on gender inequality in soccer and it’s hard not to agree. It’s difficult to imagine men being forced to play on an artificial surface in such an important game.
USWNT forward Carli Lloyd voiced her own opinion in a series of tweets on March 21.
“Had a nightmare that the 2015 World Cup was going to be played on turf!,” Lloyd (@CarliLloyd) said via Twitter. “Wonder if men’s World Cup would ever be played on turf?”
Anyone who has played on turf knows how awful it is. There are really no words to describe turf burns, and spraining the joint in the big toe, known as turf toe, is no better.
Although studies have shown there are no significant differences between the frequency of injuries on grass versus turf, natural grass is still the preferred surface for professional athletes.
French international Thierry Henry, currently playing for the New York Red Bulls in Major League Soccer, has been very open about his hate towards synthetic fields, even going as far as to refuse to play on them.
“It wasn’t stupid when I told you turf is one of the most severe things I’ve seen for us to play on,” Henry told The Daily News in 2011.
England also is clear about their opposition towards turf, as the surface has been banned from English league play since 1988.
It’s disgusting how poorly FIFA treats women’s soccer and even worse how sexist FIFA President Sepp Blatter is. In 2004, Blatter actually went as far as proposing more feminine uniforms for female soccer players to draw in sex appeal and effectively grow the game. This proposition clearly shows how fit he is to run an international federation. One that should be helping grow the men’s and women’s games equally.
With the World Cup still two years away, fingers are crossed something will be done in that time to make needed changes.
