Football followers in Nigeria have been desirous of seeing players slide on Nigeria football pitches in celebration of goals scored as we see them do in European league matches.
Regrettably, that is not the case for the simple reason that most of the pitches are outright artificial grasses and so do not allow for that, otherwise the player ends up with what we call in Nigeria ‘monkey yansh’ on their knees.
The artificial football pitch (commonly known as a synthetic pitch) has become very acceptable with Nigeria club owners who prefer to install them on their playing grounds rather than take time to grow natural grasses which most experts and professional footballers alike speak highly of.
Virtually all the grounds hosting Nigeria Premier League matches have these artificial turfs and according to a football expert, Patrick Ngwaogu who spoke with Timeline.ng, the prevalence of these turfs have contributed in no small measure in reducing the effectiveness of Nigeria footballers and has also affected the development of other sports in the country.
According to him, “I always have my reservations over artificial pitches. It has succeeded in killing others sports such as javelin, shot put among others that traditionally are practiced on the same grounds. Wherever you have artificial pitches, automatically, you have killed the other sports. There is no way you can take part in other sports on that pitch again. You will have to build another pitch for those sports.
"Artificial pitches have affected our football players the more. It's very evident that in the past many of our players walk into teams in Europe and make remarkable impact almost immediately. Then, we used to play on natural grass and this supports them in developing their techniques effectively. But now, what do you have? You have players who go on trial in teams outside the country, and find it difficult to tie down any contract, because they struggle to play on the grass pitches that they use in those countries.
"How many of our league players have gone outside to sign for reputable clubs in Europe in the last five years? There's virtually none. Artificial pitches contribute a lot to it. Grass pitches remains the best. I can never be a fan to the artificial pitches. I know of many Nigerian players that will not want to play on artificial pitches whenever they return home.
Related Articles
Ngwaogu who is also a sports journalist of repute maintained that even the world football governing body, FIFA, advocates more to natural grass as against the artificial turfs.
“The rules go on to talk about international football and says, 'Where artificial surfaces are used in competition matches between representative teams of national football associations affiliated to FIFA or international club competition matches, the surface must meet the requirements of the FIFA Quality Programme for Football Turf or the International Match Standard, unless special dispensation is given by The IFAB”.
“In other words, it must be a natural grass unless permission has been given for it be something else. Nowadays that ‘something else’ is becoming more and more common at the top end of our game. Natural grass isn’t the easiest thing in the world to maintain, especially with England’s ever-changing and difficult to predict weather. For that reason, the top stadiums use a very specific blend of real grass with artificial components as permitted by the FA,” he stated.
Ngworgu however laments that the Nigerian club owners have continued to stick to artificial turfs mainly because of laziness and poor maintenance culture, “I think the major reason why we prefer artificial turf is because of our poor maintenance culture and television coverage. Maintaining the grass pitches are always very difficult and costly.”