derwbapcicy1974

Tottenham should not have had to face Young Boys on a plastic pitch A 3-2 defeat away from home is not a bad result in a two-leg European Cup tie, and it can be considered a great result when you have come back from three goals down after half an hour and struggled to come to grips with an artificial surface. Harry Redknapp said as much after his Tottenham Hotspur players finally gave themselves a chance against Young Boys in Switzerland, although he couldn't resist having a go at the pitch in the same breath. "I have to be truthful," Redknapp said. "I played on Astroturf myself and hated every minute of it. We don't have it in England anymore and I don't think it should be used in a competition like this." Redknapp is right, whether or not he was using the surface to deflect criticism from the inadequacies of his players. It is possible that had Spurs won the game Redknapp might not have bothered to mention the artificial pitch, but his argument that you should not have idiosyncratic conditions in a competition such as the Champions League remains valid. Spurs would have to suffer quite a few relegations, after all, to encounter an artificial surface in domestic football. It cannot be acceptable that after their most successful season in decades, when they have finally reached the promised land of the Champions League, or at least the foothills below the sunny plateau, they suddenly find themselves faced with the dreaded plastic pitch. Not because plastic is unplayable but because it is different. If Redknapp really had to rest Ledley King and Aaron Lennon because he thought the surface would be too punishing, then Young Boys were at an unfair advantage. One has to be careful about generalising here because many modern pitches have an element of synthetic material in their composition ? fibres running through the grass or plastic netting beneath the surface to hold the soil together and assist drainage ? while other Champions League pitches, such as the one Monaco built over a car park, have attracted just as much criticism without being artificial. But the basic principle is clear. Forgive a cliche which may for once be appropriate ? you want a level playing field. You want a flat, grassy playing field, in fact, one that yields, takes a stud and returns a bounce just as much in one venue as it does in another. There may be reasons for impecunious clubs to cling to plastic but it seems utterly incongruous at the elite level of the Champions League. One would have thought it a simple matter for Uefa to expel plastic pitches from their showcase competition, but then you remember Fifa was powerless to prevent this year's World Cup from being turned into a circus by a flyaway ball. Fifa was powerless after the event, that is to say. It seems to have accepted all the manufacturer's guarantees and promises at face value before realising too late, when the tournament was well under way, that the world's best players were struggling with a supermarket ball. I have had a Jabulani in my hands, and that is exactly what it looks and feels like. Granted it had more weight than the sort of plastic football you see schoolboys kicking around, and it may well have been perfectly spherical and all the rest of the promotional guff, but in games it behaved markedly differently from the balls the players had been used to and one wondered why Fifa would risk such a thing in a World Cup. It is said the Germans stole a march by practising with the Jabulani for months before the tournament, yet if true that only emphasises how different the new ball was. There are not many aspects of a football game that can be regulated, after all. The size of the pitch, goals and ball, and the nature of the pitch and ball. No one would ever think of allowing a side to take part in a leading competition if its goal frames were bigger or smaller than anyone else's, just as no one would think of proceeding if a team wanted to play with a ball of a different size. Yet the odd plastic pitch is still around and, to the detriment of the tournament, the World Cup was played with a plastic ball. No leather, no stitching, no panels, just a molded plastic ball. Superior to the ones you see on garage forecourts, but still a plastic ball. In Johannesburg during the World Cup, Adidas staged a mini-exhibition of footballs through the ages and it seemed to me that near perfection had been achieved a couple of decades ago, when stitched leather balls were superbly light, round and water-resistant, and before the urge to use synthetic materials and do away with stitches and bladders arrived. Call me Luddite, if you wish, but I don't think much that has happened since counts as progress. I think football should be played with leather balls and on grass. Certainly I think football should be played with a standardised ball, like cricket. I am aware that subtle differences exist in the manufacture of cricket balls around the world, but as far as I know they are all still made of leather. I don't imagine bowlers will start pinging down tennis balls or spongies any time soon. Football would not necessarily be taking a backward step if it reverted to something that was fit for its purpose, and stuck with it. Even if Fifa insists, for commercial reasons, on having a different ball for every World Cup, then surely the time to introduce the new design would be straight after a World Cup, so that everybody gets four years to have a look at it. I understand that would not have the same commercial impact but it would be nice to think, just once in a while, that the authorities have the game's best interests at heart.