San Diego FC takes soccer show to Charlotte’s turf – San Diego Union-Tribune

If cows can’t eat it, soccer shouldn’t be performed on it.

So says the game’s international mum or dad, FIFA.

However as a substitute of taking part in on grass Saturday night time, San Diego FC might be skipping passes throughout artificial turf in Charlotte, N.C.

The match on faux grass might be a primary for the San Diego newbies. Carpet-loving Charlotte FC is 4-0 at house, outscoring opponents 10-2.

Performing nicely on carpet issues quite a bit in Main League Soccer and particularly for Western Convention-dwelling SDFC as a result of historic Western powerhouses Seattle and Portland have fake-grass fields. So does Vancouver, which leads MLS in factors and targets scored.

San Diego’s carpet recreation could also be as much as snuff for 2 causes.

The franchise’s companion membership in Denmark, FC Nordsjælland, is one in all solely two Danish SuperLiga groups which have a carpeted floor. It competes within the annual El Plastico Cup. Get it? Plastic grass.

As a result of the SDFC’s team-builders have emphasised fast-paced soccer, the enlargement membership might not resemble slowpokes on a floor that always — however not all the time — rewards a faster recreation.

“We play a style of football that, actually, turf, especially if it’s watered and it’s playing slick, can help us,” normal supervisor Tyler Heaps mentioned Friday after the group’s brisk exercise on Charlotte’s carpet. “The game should be fast, and we want a fast game in terms of moving the ball and being able to move the opponent around. I still think it’s a game where we’re going to try to take initiative in. We’re going to try to control the ball as well as we have.”

Constructing an MLS winner requires studying and adapting to an enormous number of variables. Amongst them are the huge number of discipline situations inside a 30-club league that spans from Miami to Vancouver and Montreal to San Diego.

How’s this for granular element: Heaps gleaned a not-small distinction, day to nighttime, in how the ball reacts to Charlotte’s faux grass.

“It’ll be interesting to see how much water goes on the field,” he mentioned. “Luckily we’re playing at night, so I don’t think we have to worry about it drying out as quickly as it has in some games this year. Some games that I have watched this year in Charlotte, it has been slower. Especially later in the half, whenever the sun’s beating down on it and the ball goes over the top and it kind of sticks as opposed to skips.”

SDFC coach Mikey Varas caught with a quick tempo in Friday’s exercise in Charlotte FC’s venue, whose major tenant is the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.

Although Varas shortened the exercise to protect his group’s legs, the 10-on-10 session was full pace, mentioned Heaps.

“We showed today in training that we can do it on any surface,” mentioned Heaps, who identified that two of SDFC’s 5 pitches at its Singing Hills coaching web site are carpeted. “That’s the plan. If it’s slick and the game plays fast, that’s no different from what our team in (Denmark) does. We wet the hell out of (that synthetic turf, to enhance the ball’s speed).”

FIFA requires pure grass for all its World Cup matches however permits momentary hybrid grass surfaces in venues the place it’s tougher to take care of a grass discipline. So though MLS matches in Seattle and Vancouver will proceed to be performed on carpet, these two websites might be among the many 16 venues for the 2026 World Cup, which might be staged in Canada, Mexico and america.

Carpeted fields scale back prices in labor and materials, bettering a stadium’s monetary profile. Critics of synthetic turf, who embrace the NFL gamers’ union, contend the floor is commonly tougher on athletes’ our bodies. MLS stars from Europe have been recognized to skip video games on faux grass, saying it’s too laborious on their legs. Two months in the past, a number of Brazilian stars, together with Neymar, issued an announcement denouncing a shift to synthetic surfaces of their house nation.

“The way I look at turf is that all turf fields aren’t bad and all grass fields aren’t good,” Heaps mentioned. “You look at last weekend in Colorado, (a 3-2 loss to the Rapids), I would say the (grass) field conditions were probably far from ideal, too. Similarly, here, what you can say about turf or astro or whatever you want to call it is, at least it stays true. You don’t have to worry about divots or anything like that.”

If SDFC (4-2-2) is to win the MLS Cup trophy this yr, this appears sure: it should play nicely on faux grass through the journey.

Initially Printed: April 18, 2025 at 3:36 PM PDT