A group of international women's soccer stars has retained a pair of elite U.S. and Canadian law firms and is threatening legal action over the fact that next year's World Cup tournament in Canada is to be played on artificial turf -- a situation they say is gender discrimination and violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Midfielder Jessie Fleming says the Canadian team is confident ahead of the U-20 Women's World Cup. The soccer tournament takes place in August across several Canadian cities. CP Video
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All of the fields for the FIFA Women's World Cup scheduled for next June and July -- in Montreal, Ottawa, Moncton, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver -- have artificial turf. But over the past year, some of the world's best women soccer players, including U.S. star Abby Wambach, have been speaking out against plastic pitches, which they say cause more injuries and have never before been used for a World Cup, men's or women's.
On Tuesday, the women's soccer news website The Equalizer published a copy of a letter sent on behalf of a group of women players to the top brass of the Canadian Soccer Association and to Sepp Blatter, head of the sport's world governing body FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, protesting the move to play the tournament on a 'second-class surface.'
The letter, signed by lawyers at U.S. firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP and Canadian law firm Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, asks for a dialogue over the turf issue, but threatens that 'legal recourse is available' if organizers 'refuse to voluntarily fix the field situation.'
The letter notes that the male World Cup is slated to be played on real turf in 2018 and 2022, and that the Canadian men's team has reportedly refused to play qualifying matches on fake grass in the past.
'Consigning women to a second-class surface is gender discrimination that violates European charters and numerous provisions of Canadian law, including human rights codes and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,' the letter reads.
'By singling out women for differential and unequal treatment, you not only subject the world's top players to heightened risk from an array of turf-related injuries, but you also force them to experience the legally cognizable indignity of playing the game's most important event on what your organizations admit to be an inferior surface.'
The letter singles out the surface at Vancouver's BC Place, where the finals are scheduled to be held, saying that international soccer players compare the turf there to 'playing on concrete.'
The letter names a group of supporters made up of some of the most prominent names in women's soccer, including Ms. Wambach and two of her teammates as well as Germany's Nadine Angerer, Brazil's Fabiana Da Silva Simoes, Mexico's Teresa Noyola and the entire Australian team. No current Canadian players are mentioned by name, although the letter says former Canadian star Carrie Serwetnyk, who played for the national team in the 1980s and 1990s, is a supporter.
In its letter, the group says it has consulted field experts and that 'there are several affordable ways to host the 2015 World Cup on acceptable grass surfaces.' And while it does warn of legal action, the letter says the players behind the move will play in the tournament regardless of the outcome of their turf war.
While artificial turf has long been sneered at by soccer (and baseball) purists, the technology behind artificial turf has improved since what looked like thin green carpets were installed in many North American stadiums in the 1970s. As the report in The Equalizer points out, high-level youth soccer tournaments have been already been held on artificial turf.
Some of the games in the Women's Under-20 World Cup, which Canada is hosting and which starts this week, are at some of the same venues as next year's tournament and are being played on artificial turf.
Canadian soccer officials declined to comment, referring all requests for comment to FIFA.
According to The Equalizer, Mr. Blatter, who was in Toronto on Monday for a press conference to launch the under-20 tournament, said the fields in Canada meet FIFA's standards, and that this kind of surface is necessary in places around the world because of differing climates.
'There was a time that playing on so-called artificial turf, grass - it was a nightmare,' the FIFA president reportedly said. 'It was a nightmare because there was not the quality; it was just a carpet put on concrete, as they played at a certain time in the North American Soccer League in the '80s. But now the quality of the turf, or the artificial grass, has improved very much, and it is definitely - it is the future.'
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