Most use grass, and a good handful are in multi-sport venues ... sports stadiums if you will. Consadole Sapporo plays in the Sapporo Dome (grass field for soccer and turf for baseball, sliding field structure like University of Phoenix Stadium). However, most of the clubs are situated around the Central Highland - Seto Inland Sea regions which don't receive all too much rainfall. The precipitation in Japan is very concentrated relative to the country as a whole.
I seriously wonder how many turf-haters have actually watched many games on turf from the last two years. To my eyes, it really doesn't play much differently than grass. On occasion, you'll get a fast skip where you'd expect a roll, but other than that, I see little difference. As long as the owners are willing to shell out to replace it when it gets worn (and so far they have), I see no issue with the current generation of turf, from an aesthetics perspective. Whether it is harder on the body than grass is up for reasoned debate -- but unless you're a fan of a turf-using team, do you really care? Get used to it. It will be a part of the league (and, judging by its slowly coming acceptance in Europe), the game, for the foreseeable future.
You must not have watched any Montreal home games so far this year. Granted this is a temporary situation, but the qualify of the game on that field is truly terrible.
And that is because the install is crap. But that isn't the OP's point here. He's talking about getting rid of turf in all MLS venues, which includes 4 teams that have proper turf installations. The installs that NE had 2 seasons ago, Portland and Vancouver had last season, and Seattle this season are performing significantly better than even the install Seattle had back in 2009.
No doubt about it, the biggest thing is going to be is how faithful/quickly do they fix the fields when they have issues, are we going to have a cycle of every 4th or 5th year being terrible, if so that sucks. I think the league should try and encourage real grass as much as possible, but obviously it shouldn't be a deal breaker for the league as long as the teams keep them in good working order.
Which is the approach that the league has taken. The only instances of turf in the league are in situations where it makes sense due to multi-use and climate. Speaking of working order, when is the league going to hold the Galaxy responsible for the piss poor condition of their field following the X-Games?
Well, Grassmaster is obviously the absolute best artificial surface, but its technically a hybrid. Its used all over the place (Wembley, White Hart Lane, Etihad Stadium, Villa Park, Anfield, Emirates, Allianz Arena, Volkswagen Arena, the Santiago Bernabeu, Amsterdam Arena, and Ibrox)
Grassmaster is not artificial turf. It is still 99% natural grass with artificial fibers "planted" into the field to "anchor" the grass roots to and encourage deeper root growth. It is the equivalent of calling a person that had a hip replacement an android. The benefit of Grassmaster is that it allows a team to have a natural grass field while still having some of the durability qualities of an artificial turf install, but if the stadium can't support a natural grass field, it won't be able to support a Grassmaster install either.
A lot of the problems related to Wembley and NFL games was because they had a natural grass field at the time. They only installed the Desso Grassmaster last year, so the question is, how did it perform in last year's NFL game?
I don't know but the difference is very evident to me. The ball is in the air more on turf and more passes are directed at feet instead of into space. If you try to put a diagonal ball into space, you can kiss it goodbye ... it'll end up out of bounds most of the time. There's also a lot less slide tackling on turf. Overall I think good players can adapt to playing on turf and still make the game somewhat attractive, but purely from a football aesthetic POV the PNW matches tend to be the least attractive in MLS. The only way to play on turf is quick high tempo one touch passes and crosses/long balls. It's hard to slow the tempo down because the ball just rolls and bounces so fast. On grass you can mix it up and incorporate slower more precise and deliberate passes instead of the chaos on turf.
With all these "obvious" issues with the turf, why are players bitching about the "box size" of the field in Portland rather than the obviously shitty playing surface that isn't God's green grass ?
I all my time as MLS fan I've heard countless negative remarks about turf from players, coaches, fans, media etc ... and I've yet to hear one about box size I'm sure it's a big deal since you brought it up, but I don't think it comes close to the endless hours of seizure inducing ping pong soccer that comes out of the PNW every week.
I have found that the turf haters tend to see what they want to see. They only look for things that they think shouldn't happen on a grass field. Then they store those memories away as if its some kind of proof. I can sit there and watch any game played on grass and start repeating the same comments except add "That wouldn't happen on an artificial surface" And in some cases like the way SKC's stadium was towards the end of last year with the poor field condition, would never happen on an artificial surface. Or before Houston got their stadium, at the end of every season when football season started their field would be just as much sand and very uneven. Or the Home Depot Center after events. With their miss matched grass etc. And if you have never heard teams and players complain about smaller fields, they do. They used to complain about Buckshaw when the Earthquakes had it painted smaller. I have also seen enough games in Central America to realize their grass fields are different then ours. The ball plays differently on them then it does on ours. There are different types of grass fields and no field plays the exact same as any other.
I'm not totally buying into the idea of weather being the main reason for turf, Mariners play across the street and there natural grass playing surface is flawless, I have a large lawn in seattle suburbia and besides the moss problem, its easy to maintain. It has to be because of overuse and the fact that nfl/college football is just murder to natural grass. and makes it impossible to manage natural playing surface.
Where do you store them? That is the argument not their favor in Portland. The areas under the seating is not that big because it is built on a natural gully and is a wall of rock 20 feet under the stands. Very true. We're talking about water retention models. Jeld-Wen sits so low in the water table that in the past it rarely dried out. This means grass growth in water logged areas is stunted [grass doesn't grow when inundated in water] and lays down poor roots. One good rain and use and POOF, grass gone, mud remains. Take all the combinations, light, weather, climate, soil water retention, costs, the intensity of the use and how many times does it happen. As asoc stated, there is an observer's bias. I keep correcting people for parroting past grievances that have been addressed. I doubt many have looked at the finer details of what it takes to get a two star FIFA rating. It involves a series of on site field tests to measure about 8 different scenarios of player/ball to surface interactions. They have data from real grass fields from the same tests. The soccer field will NOT get a two star rating if they cannot fall within the same variance you find on real grass. In fact, the target zones must be more reliable than real grass. http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/afdeveloping/pitchequip/fqc_football_turf_folder_342.pdf Skip past the testimonials and go to the testing.
As far as the playing style being different on turf vs. grass, FIFA released a study earlier this year that studied two Russian stadiums to see if there was a difference between the playing style on grass and turf and found no major difference. http://www.prozonesports.com/news-article-analysis-fifa-turf-study.html Granted it is one study that only covered a single season at two stadiums, but it is the first study of its kind, so hopefully there will be more.
I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Rapids and Denver Broncos both play on a hybrid surface. Even in the old days when the Bronco's stadium had the Rapids and the Outlaws (outdoor lax) playing on the same surface as the football team, the field was always in very good condition, minus the dirt holes that got worn around the lacrosse goals. I'll also go so far as to say that the Rapids have consistently had the best playing surface in MLS ever since Dick's opened. Does Denver get as much rain as the PNW? Of course not. That however doesn't mean a hybrid surface could not work. The problem is when people think of grass surface in a wet climate, people tend to think of the mud-bogs of lower division clubs in England and Scotland that can't afford good upkeep on their pitch regardless. You're seeing more hybrid surfaces pop up because its the best compromise between a surface thats actually natural, but able to be more resilient in poor conditions.
And boom goes the dynamite. To have a durable grass field, you have to have deep roots. In order to get deep roots, the grass has to dry out between waterings. That's a hell of a lot easier to accomplish with a retractable roof.
Interesting stuff. This stood out to me: "Perhaps more telling is that the quality of passing on grass was of a higher standard, teams completing 80.7% of passes while falling to 77.5% at the Luzhniki Stadium. While, at least superficially, this may appear detrimental to the reputation of football turf, when the figures are broken down we can see that a greater percentage of passes are played forwards on artificial surfaces than they are on grass, something that arguably makes for a more offensive game and a more entertaining spectacle." I think there's something to this.