From the United States to Qatar, the long journey of the World Cup turf

According to football specialists, the perfect turf is deep green and 23mm high, allowing players to develop their game at full speed. And for the organizers of the 2022 Men’s World Cup, the most perfect of perfect courses comes from the US state of Georgia, where it was developed by the company International Turf Atlas.

As Quartz explains, this company was in fact commissioned by Qatar to equip eight stadiums and eighty-one training fields by installing the Platinum TE Paspalum, its star meadow, grown in the southeastern United States. A heavy responsibility, says CEO John Holmes – who, it should be noted, is just a namesake for former movie star X played on screen by Val Kilmer.

“It’s unnerving” confides the boss, who constantly fears that his lawn is not up to the event – ​​which would be the worst publicity. But his apprehension doesn’t stop there: providing a poor quality pitch increases the risk of a player getting injured.

To reassure himself, John Holmes carefully examines the matches. He checks that his precious turf isn’t damaged, that the area in front of the goals – one of the most used – holds up well and that the corners of the field don’t dry out – these are the worst areas. therefore the most difficult to keep in good condition. For now, his lawns are holding up. And since the tournament is coming to an end, it should be like this until the end.

A hell of a challenge

The good health of the Platinum TE Paspalum after a month of competition is obviously excellent news for Atlas Turf International, especially as this turf is being sold as the coating of the future: it is one that requires less water (from 25% to ​​30% % less than the average) and emit less carbon.

The challenge was all the more difficult as the weather conditions made the mission more complicated than the average. Due to the high temperatures, Qatar’s stadiums have indeed been built in such a way as to create as much shade as possible inside the enclosures, which is beneficial for the players and the public, but less so for photosynthesis. As for air shifts, they are extremely rare.

Platinum TE Paspalum was chosen precisely for its resistance to extreme conditions. Salt water, stagnant air, insufficient light: on paper it tolerates everything and even worse. Developed by an expert named Ron Duncan, who developed his know-how at the University of Georgia, it was officially born in 2007.

It is in Adel, a city of 5,000 souls located 300 kilometers south of Atlanta, that grows this grass trampled by Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé and the others. After three months of growth, the twigs destined for Qatar were collected there, washed, packaged and then sent to Doha by sea in refrigerated containers.

The first shipments were made in 2014, at the Al-Rayyan stadium. Since then, 138 tons of grass have been sent to the various World Cup fields.

Plugins

The twigs were not immediately installed in the stadiums they were intended for: when they arrived on site, they were first planted on dedicated surfaces, close to the stadiums. Their development continued and, once a compact turf had been formed, the strips of turf were cut, rolled and then transferred into the final sods.

The grass itself can be quite green, but unfortunately this is not the case with the conditions put in place by the Qatari organizer to preserve it until the end of the tournament, regrets Quartz: important air conditioning systems ensure a minimum of air circulation and it takes about 8,300 liters of water a day to irrigate it. A winter figure that will have to be multiplied by five when summer arrives.

The water needed for irrigation is also obtained from desalination, a process whose carbon footprint is absolutely disastrous. Proof that this lawn, as green as it may seem, is actually only on the surface.