Kickoff (Cape Town)
29 July 2008
When the South African national development team meets Zambia in their Cosafa Challenge semifinal at the Thulamahashe Stadium in Bushbuckridge on Wednesday, they will be playing on an artificial surface.
Questions have often been asked whether the game changes when it is played on the artificial surface, known as Football Turf or Astroturf, compared to matches on natural grass?
To answer this question in an objective and independent way, the world governing body Fifa recently commissioned UK-based company, ProZone, to carry out a study in this regard.
The study was measurable as ProZone could track every pass and movement through video technology.
A 100-match analysis was carried out featuring the Uefa Champions League, Uefa Cup, the Dutch Premier League and the Fifa Under-20 World Cup in Canada.
This provided advanced technical, tactical and physical information on the teams and players' performances.
The study concluded was that 'there are no significant differences in using Football Turf versus top-quality natural grass.'
Other key findings included that the 'ball in play' time for matches was extremely similar on Football Turf and natural grass; 55-56 percent of the game on average, players enjoyed a similar number of touches on the ball on both surfaces and no notable differences were observed in terms of the passing success rates.
The one difference however, was that players are more likely to perform ground tackles on grass surfaces (one in four challenges against one in five on Football Turf). But strangely this did not correlate to the number of fouls and yellow cards awarded, which was greater on the artificial surface.
This suggests that players are hesitant to go in low, hard and cleanly on the artificial surfaces and this is resulting in a slightly higher number of fouls.
An interesting aspect of ProZone's process which uses between one and 10 fixed sensors positioned on both sides of the stadium to capture and measure every player and ball movement accurately, is its increasing number of usages.
ProZone currently work alongside over 60 professional football clubs worldwide offering post-match analysis, scouting services, referees evaluation and real-time feedback.
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