From the World Cup to the victory tour, the U.S. women’s national soccer team’s 2015 campaign was aglow in joy and celebration. There remained, however, an undercurrent of discontent — not just among the Americans, but almost all female players worldwide — about playing regularly on artificial turf instead of grass.
It was an issue of not just fairness, but safety and quality of play.
They had fought FIFA on the World Cup issue and lost, leaving the sport’s premier competition last summer on six synthetic surfaces in Canada. Afterward, the U.S. Soccer Federation did not help the broader cause by scheduling most of the 10-game victory tour on the fake stuff.