Champions League Final & Why The Grass Was Refrigerated

The UEFA Champions League Final kicks off in just 2 days' time - Wednesday 21 May - and the Manchester Utd and Chelsea players have already flown out there to prepare for what promises to be a great match. As always with major football trophy finals, it will be a colourful spectacle - the thousands of British fans will be sporting their team's colours (Man Utd's red & white, Chelsea's blue & white) and the pitch (installed by British returfing experts Support In Sport) will add a marvellously, contrasting, glorious green to the whole affair.

The condition of the grass will doubtless be superb given the mammoth effort that went into its recent installation - see previous Champions League Final Pitch article.

However, the specialist installation team only began their work after another team had finished theirs - the fleet of 28 refrigerated trucks and their drivers. Photo shows some of the trucks lined up after delivery.

So why refrigerate the grass? We asked one of the SIS experts and apparently freshly cut and rolled turf, such as is used on football pitch installations, can heat up quite easily. This is known in the trade as 'sod heating' and can result in the turf suffering heat stress and dying. Potentially disastrous consequences then if you're talking about a UEFA Final! So to transport the turf any reasonable distance it has to be within a cool, temperature controlled environment - hence the refrigerated trucks. A great example of how an entirely different, unrelated industry can play a key role in sports stadia management.

FIFA President's Pitch For Artificial Turf In 2010

Artificial turf recently received one of its biggest 'thumbs up' yet for use in high profile, world class sport: the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

The event will take place in Africa and the climatic conditions that prevail there have been causing concern to its organisers for some time. With natural grass turf, the weather has to be considered and in many African countries the rainy and dry seasons make it difficult to produce and maintain top quality soccer pitches. The quality of the playing surfaces is always a crucial factor in top level soccer; indeed the final outcome of an important game can sometimes be influenced by how a pitch is playing. With these factors in mind, FIFA President Sepp Blatter has publicly suggested that artificial turf pitches are worthy of consideration for use in the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Commenting on the disappointing quality of the 2008 Nations Cup grass pitches in Ghana, Mr. Blatter pointed out that an artificial turf pitch offers players the same conditions all year round. In other words it's a matter of consistent quality.

As President of FIFA, Mr. Blatter is well aware of the importance of all he says. It is therefore been all the more surprising to many sports critics and fans that he went so far as to say:

"Artificial turf is the future"

Not surprising to us however! Within our Group we have a specialist company (SIS) that builds both natural turf and artificial pitches.

A more detailed account of Sepp Blatter's recent comments can be found on Eurosport.

Photograph: Artificial soccer pitch installed by SIS.