10 minute read
World Cup preparations
Scott MacCallum talks with Lee Collier, STRI’s Technical Director, about the challenges that had to be overcome to stage football’s premier event
World Cup with a difference
All together now… “On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me: Five Red Cards; Four VAR Referrals; Three French Pens; Two Perfect Pitches, and a Southgate in a State of Glee.”
Yes, both Christmas and the FIFA World Cup will be different this year. When the realisation dawned that a traditional summer World Cup in Qatar might be a little too warm for players and spectators alike, the decision was made to move the tournament to November and December.
So this year, for one World Cup only, that legendary front five of Rudolph, Blitzen, Cupid, Prancer and Dancer will be challenging the superstars of Messi, Neymar, Mbappe, Bale and Kane for game time.
It is certain that this year’s Qatar World Cup will offer a real change from the regular four yearly spectacle, it created a slew of challenges to overcome and not just to the calendar. But don’t just take my word for it. Lee Collier, STRI’s Technical Director, has been heavily involved in preparations, not just for this World Cup but for every one since South Africa in 2010.
STRI came together with the Aspire Zone Foundation in Qatar to bolster local expertise in sports turf. Together they formed Aspire Sports Turf, for whom Ewen Hodge, formerly of STRI, runs the AST Turf Programme, which worked to ensure solutions to Qatar’s unique set of challenges.
Their research facility provided the team with vital knowledge ahead of the construction of a turf farm on the outskirts of Doha. It
enabled studies into optimising turf quality for the tournament, as well as identifying the most efficient and sustainable water management practices to be used in that specific climate.
The work that Lee and his STRI colleagues have carried out means there is every confidence that the tournament will be successful from a stadium and pitch perspective, while some of the research has unearthed advances which may be beneficial long after the football circus has moved on from Qatar.
“One of the significant challenges of Qatar was the timing of the tournament and the fact that originally it was scheduled to happen in summer,” recalled Lee. “The stadium designers had been given a brief that they had to provide a stadium which was a bowl and which could be operated in 24 degrees temperature. That meant that they had to incorporate passive cooling or cooling mechanisms to be able to provide those conditions at game time,” explained Lee.
When you appreciate that Qatar is one of the driest countries on the planet, with fewer than nine rainy days per year and average highs of 41 degrees Celsius, the scale of the problem can be seen.
“In order to achieve that – to be able to move air passively inside one of those stadiums – effectively what you have to do is build very high structures with a very small roof opening, because that way you keep the air inside and limit the amount of loss through the top.”
This turf farm on the outskirts of Doha allowed local studies into optimising turf quality for the tournament
LEE COLLIER, STRI’S TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
} That was a solution to a problem identified for a summer
World Cup in Qatar, but it wasn’t something that would work for the November and December version which we have now.
“There is a conflict of interest in relation to shade and light which is massively important for turf health, hence the advancement in grow light systems over the last 20 years. If you build something higher, and some of the stadiums in Qatar are 70 to 80 metres high, you are reducing the amount of light significantly,” explained Lee.
Putting a big roof over the stadium
to create shade made it extremely difficult to grow warm season grasses and, as is often the case, the requirements of spectators had been considered to be more important to that of the pitch.
“Research showed that the turf would need massive amounts of light energy to thrive, three times more than we generally use in Europe. And when you consider that the average UK groundsman in the winter can be using rigs 12 hours a day, you can imagine the theoretical numbers that our light analysis came up with.”
Such an energy-sapping plan did sit uncomfortably with the overarching desire to make the tournament as sustainable as possible.
“With such a reliance on supplementary light, in a country with so much natural light, there was a big drive to see what could be done to optimise roof design to lower the requirement for artificial light and let in more natural light.”
As a result, many of the stadiums incorporate translucent panels on the southern end in a attempt to let in more light.
“There is an argument to be had about how successful they will be without a system to clean the roof panels in a climate where there is so much sand and so many dust storms, but we made a genuine attempt to try and provide more light while complying with the wider requirements of spectators,” said Lee.
“We went through multiple different roof configurations and analysis of roof components and materials, and it was certainly very interesting to be involved in the design side of things. There were some new fabrics on the market at the time which proved to be quite high in light transmission rates but also would provide shade.”
The next phase was to identify the best cultivars for the tournament, a process which included the AST team, alongside STRI’s Christian Spring, Ruth Mann, (who has since left the Group), }
As you would expect, much care and attention is focussed on making sure the World Cup stadia can stand up to global scrutiny
} Richard Gibbs and Lee himself.
The research also helped to establish the signature pitch design to be used at the Qatar
World Cup, a unified design to be used across all venues to ensure maximum consistency of surface characteristics.
What was ultimately chosen was a cultivar used in Asia, Australia and the Americas – paspalum with the variety Platinum, known for its exceptional disease resistance, efficient uptake of nutrients and water, fewer fertiliser applications and less irrigation.
However, the winter tournament timing means that while the base of the pitch is paspalum they will have transitioned to rye grass.
“At that time of year conditions dictate that the turf would be semi dormant, and you couldn’t play a tournament on it so you have to oversow with rye,” Lee explained.
The next issue to address was that of irrigation.
“We did look at surface irrigation but we also looked at the possibility of using sub surface irrigation systems because the less water you put on the top the less you lose through evapotransporation.
We were looking at around 40% water saving if we went sub surface against traditional overhead irrigation,” he said.
They looked at a number of methods including the passive method which was used in Europe, a conventional leaky pipe system and another which involved a layer of impermeable membrane to spread the water out.
“The leaky pipe does work but what happens is that it comes out of the pipe and goes straight down. The research carried out showed that the passive irrigation worked really well, could charge the root zone layers and provide consistent and uniform depth of water.
“Water is going to be on everybody’s agenda in the turf industry, so any kind of mechanism to help to sustainably manage water and save, is something which is going to be considered, even in traditionally wetter parts of the world.”
With lighting, cultivar and irrigation issues addressed the fourth element of a successful stadium pitch was tackled.
“That was basically pulling everything together, incorporating vacuum and ventilation, sub air systems, and different types of turf reinforcement all in combination just to ensure that the various elements of individual research were validated.”
The construction project was put out to tender and split between various local businesses to reduce the build time. Consistency was ensured as all companies were working to the exact same design and specification – what became known as the Signature Pitch –- as well as the supervision and management of the construction being overseen by AST itself.
Running parallel to the early }
phases of the journey, AST also ran an educational programme, which became the Qatar national training programme for all turf construction and management. The aim of this was to upskill contractors who had limited experience of elite sports surfaces due to lack of demand in the country previously for the World Cup.
This training programme ensured that all contractors were trained and accredited by AST prior to any work taking place, enabling them to deliver the pitches to the exact specification, and arming them with valuable transferable skills for the future.
With just a few weeks to go until the World Cup kicks off, Lee believes that from a sporting perspective it will be superb.
“I was first in Qatar six or seven years ago and it was quite a different place to what it is now. The speed of development has been astonishing and I’m sure it will be a really good tournament. That said, it will not be a conventional tournament because it is being held in quite a small area so, logistically, it will be different.
“I was in Moscow for the Russia World Cup four years ago where there were two stadiums with everything else in other parts of the country. And it was really busy. Having everyone all in one small space will be unique, and that will be a huge challenge to the infrastructure. } “It might be that it will work well
} because everything is close together and we learn that it is a good way of doing it. I know that they have also relaxed some of their laws slightly to accommodate footballing culture.”
The spotlight has fallen on some aspects of human rights in
Qatar and welfare of the workers who have built the stadiums, but having seen the work first-hand,
Lee is happy that on their side at least, standards are high.
“In our world it is important that the people you work with are comfortable with doing what they are doing, and I know at that AST they have the right procedures and mechanisms in place to ensure everything they do is ethically sound. So I am comfortable with that.”
Lee is hopeful that work commitments will allow him to attend Qatar as he has wonderful memories of attending
World Cups in the past and has particularly strong memories of the
Argentina – Mexico game which he attended four years ago.
“Maradona was in the crowd and at one point he was smoking a cigar and everyone stopped and started clapping him. It was almost as though the match was incidental, and Lionel Messi was on the pitch playing. There is something really special about a World Cup.”
Whether he is there or not this time around, Lee will be interspersing his Christmas festivities with making sure he pays full attention to all aspects of the stadiums and the pitches in Qatar just to ensure everything matches up to expectations.
Not least because it may well act as a basis for the preparation work for the 2026 World Cup in the USA.
Now, here we go…
