FIFA Quality Artificial Grass Introduction

Artificial turf has been around now for several decades. It can be argued that artificial turf was originally developed to address the limitations of natural grass. However, the earliest versions were not designed for football and changed the game dramatically. Therefore, football never thoroughly embraced the thought of high level competition matches on artificial surfaces.

The breakthrough came about when manufacturers started to develop surfaces specifically designed for football. Manufacturers have now developed a turf that mirrors real grass. In order to get away from the short, tightly packed matting of the earlier generation, nowadays, the concept is to produce longer and more thinly spaced tufts and most of the systems are infilled with sand for support and rubber granules to give bounce. This newest generation of artificial turf, has proven to be the most favorable for football to date.

FIFA realized that, as the game’s global popularity increases, so the climate plays a greater part in limiting its development. Players in countries at the extreme ends of the temperature range won’t necessarily benefit from the predominance of natural-grass turf. With the deployment of third-generation artificial turf pitches, FIFA has recognized the enormous benefits artificial pitches would bring to the global development of football, not only because artificial turf can be used in more extreme climates, but because, where a pitch is used intensively it can be used almost 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

Due to the numerous manufacturers and installers involved worldwide, all using slightly different systems, the performance of artificial pitches could be extremely variable. Therefore FIFA as the world governing body of football wants to ensure that there is a recognised international standard for artificial turf pitches and has introduced, in 2001, the FIFA Quality Concept for artificial turf. This quality testing scheme uses real turf as its benchmark and awards the FIFA Recommended Marks to those pitches that meet the very stringent quality criteria.