The Football Veikkausliiga started in familiar characters when all the teams playing on the natural grass had to transfer their opening match of the season to the substitutes.
FC Lahti was the latest to join the team, having to postpone just three days before the match. Lahti reserve field Kisapuisto did not meet the league licensing requirements, and Ilves and Inter had already moved their season opening matches to another reserve field in Valkeakoski, so the people of Lahti played their home opening in Vaasa last week.
In addition to Ilves, Inter and Lahti, Honka and AC Oulu previously moved their home openings.
Match transfers made the opening of the domestic football season an embarrassing show when teams playing in the “wrong” locations drew only a couple hundred spectators to the opening matches.
The problem will continue this weekend, when Inter from Turku will play their home game in Helsinki on Sunday and AC Oulu from Oulu will play their home match in Vaasa on Sunday. Honka has also moved his fourth round match to Helsinki.
Natural grass (5): AC Oulu, Inter, Honka, FC Lahti, Ilves.
Artificial turf (7): SJK, HJK, KuPS, VPS, Haka, HIFK, IFK Mariehamn.
The same solution is being found in more and more cities. Only five of the league’s twelve teams will play their home games on the natural grass this season.
The last of the league teams to move to artificial turf was IFK Mariehamn, when Mariehamn’s natural turf changed to artificial turf in the summer of 2020. Ilves has played natural turf in Ratina so far, but artificial turf awaits it at Tammela’s new stadium, which will be completed at the end of next year.
Head coach of the lynx Toni Kallio considers the transition to be natural.
– Practically everyone will probably move to artificial turf. It allows the season to lengthen. Of course, I like the grass, but it’s a natural displacement at these latitudes, Kallio says.
Captain Ilves Tatu Miettunen rejoices the artificial grass brings more opportunities.
– We get to train on the same platform we play on. Now we play in Ratina and train on a completely different field. As a football romantic, it’s great to play on the grass, but good artificial turf is still a good platform.
In the future, the season will start in March?
In the future, the season will probably start even earlier. Chairman of the Veikkausliiga Kaarlo Kankkunen said at the opening ceremony of Veikkausliiga that the goal is to extend the season.
– In the main series clubs in Veikkausliiga and Ykkönen, we have a total of ten stadium projects underway. Maybe in the future we will start games even in March, when the conditions are good, Kankkunen said.
Will all Veikkausliiga clubs play on the artificial turf platform in the future?
Yes, at least if you ask the Football Association Condition Manager From Tero Auvinen. According to Auvinen, the development started 22 years ago, when the first Tekonurmet was installed in Finland.
– In 2003, Veikkausliiga started playing with artificial turf, when Töölö football stadium became artificial turf and since then, in practice, the stadium has moved to the artificial turf platform at a time. The final transition will take place through the arrival of new stadiums. In practice, at least according to current information, everyone has chosen an artificial turf platform, Auvinen says.
“Artificial turf is the best option in Finland”
Honka is still playing his match in a stadium built of scaffolding for a temporary solution.
When the stadium is completed in Espoo in due course, there will also be artificial turf there.
– I think we need to be involved in development. If we want to start the series as early as March, the platform must be artificial turf. Natural grass is impossible to get in good shape. It also harms the product, if the grass is in poor condition, the quality of the game will suffer. That’s not a good thing, of course, Hongan Duarte Tammilehto points out.
Tammilehto also sees development as a good thing.
– I am also happy that there will be good artificial turfs, good stadiums and they are also good to play. We are in Finland, here artificial turf is perhaps the best option.
Not everyone agrees.
Sports Expert Antti Pohjan According to Finland, the discussion focuses largely on whether natural grasslands are in good condition in early spring and late autumn.
According to Pohja, it has been accepted in black and white that artificial turf would be the best option.
– Would there be any more rocks that we could make to make solutions a little more on the terms of species? It’s about the nature of the sport and how the players and the ball move in relation to the platform and on the other hand in relation to each other. In artificial turf, the game acts are inevitably different. Then there is the international aspect, football is still a grass sport.
Pohja says he understands the rationale for artificial turf: for example, climate, cost, and ease of maintenance encourage the replacement of artificial turf.
But they can also be challenged.
– I have heard from many places that artificial grass quickly gets hard. Too hard a field does not pass Uefa’s criteria. What does it do to a level if the field is too hard, the level of the game suffers further and players are at risk of injury due to the field?
Transferred from Häcken to HJK for this season Joona Toivio calls for good maintenance of artificial turf fields.
– I think the new, watered artificial turf is a good field, but then when they start to wear out and go bad, the ball no longer behaves the same way. There are risks of injury, slips and more, Toivio says.
Ilves Miettunen is on the same lines.
– If there is a slightly harder artificial turf platform that doesn’t have a decent spring mat underneath, notice in the joints and places the next day that you’ve been playing for 90 minutes. Really well-done artificial turf makes little difference.
Toivio is used to playing on an artificial turf platform, as there was artificial turf at Häcken’s home field in Hisingen. Also in Molde, which Toivio represented in 2013–2017, Kotikenttä turned into artificial turf after the first year.
– I prefer a good natural lawn to a good artificial lawn, but the fact is that there are challenges with the weather. The natural lawn is not in great condition all year round. At that point, I would definitely choose a good artificial turf rather than a bad potato field.
Auvinen, the conditions manager of the Finnish Football Association, reminds that the FIFA certification system of the International Football Association is used in the construction and quality control of artificial turf.
– The quality of the field is tested before installation, it must pass the Fifa quality test, after which the field is subjected to an annual Fifa field test to determine its condition. After the field test, the certificate is valid for 12 months, during which it can play Veikkausliiga and international games. Artificial turf coating has been allowed in all Uefa games since the final tournaments.
According to Auvinen, field testing is rigorous, and in stadium conditions, artificial turf lasts for three to five years.
The miracle of the Olympic Stadium
However, there are also examples of good natural grass in Finland in early spring.
The bottom raises the lawn of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, for example. The Owners opened the World Cup qualifiers at the Olympic Stadium in March and closed them against France in November. The season at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium lasted 236 days this year and there were 182 events on the grass. Jani Kurvisen the team led sometimes worked around the clock in two shifts in order the field was in good condition before the match. (switch to another service) The grass received light and heat from hundreds of growing lamps, among other things.
The clubs may not have as many resources at their disposal, but Pohja also sees the platform as a potential brand factor.
– The cost of natural or hybrid turf may increase in the short term, but is it worth the investment if the brand improves in the eyes of players, coaches, fans, consumers, partners and the media and is closer to the criteria and standards of international football? For example, could a hybrid lawn be seen as an investment, both gaming and financially?
The comparison of costs is challenging, as they depend on many different factors: for example, how often the artificial turf platform is changed and how natural grass is taken care of.
Pohja suggests that the first rounds could be played on high-quality artificial turf platforms. You could switch to natural or hybrid grass once they are in order.
– I see at least as big a problem in the middle of the summer as sacrificing lawns that are at their best from year to year and are played with a kind of compromise that is not species-specific.
All the players and coaches interviewed by Urheilu are quite unanimous on the matter: the lawn is definitely better than artificial turf, but in Finland the conditions drive to choose artificial turf.
– Football is a game of football, football should definitely be played on real grass. But then we are Finland, here it is an impossibility. We have to play with artificial turf, it’s not worth thinking about it anymore, KuPS pilot Simo Valakari crystallize.
According to Valakari, KuPS prepares for teams playing on natural grass with its own artificial grass.
– We’re just going to play that one game. If you start a couple of days before swinging the platform, it may be that your legs will get even more stuck than from that one game. That’s not a problem.
KuPS captain Henri Toivomäki is on the same lines as the head coach.
– It hasn’t been played regularly on the grass for a long time, so there will also be a man in the artificial turf here, even though it would be great to be able to play on the grass. But we have to be with you.
A hybrid solution?
One solution to the dispute between natural grass and artificial grass is hybrid grass. For example, in the Swedish men’s main series, three teams will play in the hybrid grass this season: IFK Gothenburg, Kalmar FF and Malmö FF.
Auvinen thinks that similar ones will soon be seen in Finland as well.
-Now the artificial turf is underway, but it may be that in the future, as the products develop, we will have hybrid fields. They have different mixtures and structures of natural and artificial grass. This development is moving forward all the time, Auvinen says.
Antti Pohja also proposes hybrid turf as one compromise solution.
– A hybrid lawn could give more mercy. The field would also last better in the spring and late fall moments. For example, HJK could take a hybrid field to experiment and see if it would last the entire long season. If that happened, it would be a positive thing for others as well.