Now it’s time again for football, and England sets the scene for the 13th UEFA European Women’s Championship. The tournament will offer 31 matches between Europe’s best women national football teams and the expectations for the pitch quality is sky high being in the homeland of football and turf maintenance.
The finals take place from 6th – 31st July. 16 teams are qualified, and the matches will be played at 10 venues in 8 cities: London, Brentford, Manchester, Sheffield, Rotherham, Milton Keynes, Brighton and Southampton.
The legendary Old Trafford in Manchester will kick off the opening match between England and Austria and the final takes place at England’s National Stadium Wembley in London. The biggest broadcasting deal ever for women’s football has been made, so many can watch the matches on TV and inspect the quality of the grass pitch in the 10 stadiums.
From a turf seed’s point of view, you might be a bit starstruck watching the tournament on some of Europe’s finest grass pitches. Expectations are high when it comes to the playing surfaces being in the homeland of football with the World’s best league. The English groundsmen are champions when it comes to delivering pitches with top quality. The groundsmen tradition is long in England with a well-educated staff to deliver top quality in all the football leagues. This means that all the stadiums chosen for this tournament are well prepared and able to offer a high pitch quality.
The groundsmen are striving to get a uniform, dense and smooth playing surface for the players and a good visual appearance for the spectators. To achieve this, they depend on good maintenance skills, a good pitch construction and not least top varieties of sport turf perennial ryegrass developed for the British climate.
Decades of plant breeding targeting turf perfection have resulted in a broad selection of top-quality varieties with high wear tolerance, high shoot density and a perfect color.
Recently, the new 4turf® tetraploid perennial ryegrasses are gaining ground in the football stadiums providing better stress tolerance and fast establishment which provide the safety net in the turf mixture. The grass at tournament stadiums is exposed to a lot of stress during a championship but with the skills of the talented groundsmen staff and champion grass varieties, we are convinced that the grass will stay green and perfect all the way to the final.
So just sit back and enjoy the perfected football pitches and a bouquet of great matches
About the stadiums:
Several of the stadiums are well known from The Premier League (Brentford, Old Trafford, Southampton etc.) but also stadiums known from academy matches (Manchester City Academy), women tournaments (Leigh Sports Village), Football League Championship matches (Sheffield) and England’s fourth tier (Rotherham) are used in this tournament.
