Welcome to this week’s issue of High Protein Beef Paste. This is one of those weeks in which I explore a topic that’s beyond my knowledge. (Shut up, it’s not the same every week.)
By way of an introduction to the main piece below I’ll just say that I’m not making any medical claims, nor am I suggesting that the handful of sources referenced somehow represent substantial research. They don’t.
I have done some research but not enough to have made any judgement on what causes what, where dangers lie or who’s worth listening to and who isn’t. I just think it’s an interesting subject that was worth some time.
So, without wanting to get all “do your own research” about this because I’m not one of them: do your own research. There’s a bunch of stuff out there that covers the issues outlined in the piece.
Let’s ‘ave it.
Football pitches and pesticides
In January 2023, Nottingham Forest flew to Blackpool for their Emirates FA Cup Third Round match against what was then Michael Appleton’s EFL Championship outfit. Forest’s stoppage time goal turned 4-0 into 4-1, a less than thrilling conclusion to a trip that had been just as costly to Forest’s public image.
Football clubs all over the country fly unnecessarily either frequently or occasionally but, for whatever reason, this particular journey was singled out for special attention and football’s environmental impact was thrust back into the spotlight for the first time since the ludicrous decision to host the European Championships across the entire continent.
Football is an international sport. We take overseas competition for granted and think nothing of teams flying to all manner of destinations to play a match. It raises big questions – too big for football, in truth, but worth pondering nonetheless.
Discourse around football’s footprint usually centres on travel. Steve Cooper was unfortunate to find himself as the poster boy for gratuitous domestic aviation; in a country as small as England, it’s a valid discussion that shouldn’t focus specifically on his team’s flight to Lancashire.
Far more insidious is the increasing hunger for far flung pre-season tours and prestige friendlies. Unless we don’t want football at all, we must accept that competitive away games are necessary. Exhibition football in the name of naked greed is not.
Are continental competitions unethical? Is international football as a concept simply too big a negative to justify? What about overseas travel for leisure more generally? I’m not going anywhere near those questions because you, and I, won’t like the answers.
Travel is just one strand of football’s outsized impact on the planet. Energy is another. Lights are left on at stadiums and training grounds and that’s the tip of the iceberg. The cultural shift it would take to limit that damage is enormous to the point of impossibility.
Football facilities having the lights on and football teams travelling are just part of the global movement and existence of people. They can’t be dealt with in isolation and that’s probably for the best; the chances of a football resolution to these matters are vanishingly small.
But what about our own turf? Our literal, actual, real, green turf – the surface upon which the beautiful game is played.
In elite football’s endless quest for perfection it has ruthlessly pursued improved pitches and the sport is now played on flawless lawns, albeit with more than a helping hand from synthetic fibres and engineering solutions I won’t even pretend to know about or understand.
We are also reliant to a noteworthy degree on pesticides. Football has a duty to fully, honestly and ethically consider that fact.
The use of pesticides (“a chemical preparation for destroying plant, fungal, or animal pests”) and herbicides (“a substance or preparation for killing plants, especially weeds”) on sports pitches in the UK is – appropriately – widespread.
Despite the prevalence of pesticides in football and sport, it’s not a dominant issue even when the environmental impact of sport is in the news, but it is one that academics, experts and indeed some clubs have been looking at.
Grounds staff are advised on the deployment of pesticides on football pitches and the simple fact is that their usefulness isn’t in question. They destroy plant, fungal, or animal pests – exactly what it says on the vat. For the avoidance of doubt, the matter at hand is chemical pesticides. Unsurprisingly in our ecologically savvy times, there’s a vocal lobby against them.
Common chemical solutions for just about anything can be controversial and football is no different. It’s also not new territory and the Football Association has guidelines in place for groundspersons, including:
“It is…only permissible to use a herbicide which is approved for use on sports turf, and this is likely to be a total herbicide. COSHH and a suitable Risk Assessment must be carried out prior to any application. A further legal consideration is that the user must have successfully obtained his/her Certificate of Competence in the Safe Use of Pesticides (PA1, PA2A or PA6A).”
Such restrictions around the types of pesticides permitted for use on football pitches are clearly a step in the right direction but it’s the “legal consideration” that most stands out.
The studies that have been carried out in the past ten years call for more education and the requirement for grounds staff to be certified for the use of pesticides is an indication of progress on that front. Indeed, groundsperson job descriptions at top clubs call for various levels of National Proficiency Test Council certification in pesticide use.
The eagle-eyed will have noticed the COSHH reference in the passage from the FA. You probably know that this stands for Control of Substances Hazardous to Health – in addition to the environmental damage through air pollution, water pollution and collateral wildlife annihilation, pesticides fall into that category in a diverse number of ways.
The documented threats to players and grounds staff directly include respiratory problems, skin irritation and cancer – incidentally, the same claims have been made of rubber crumb – and there are suggestions that football specifically has cause to lead the way when it comes to revolutionising the management of pesticides on sports pitches.
Motor Neurone Disease is, sadly, a familiar condition for fans of sports in the UK. Professional sportspeople have been MND’s most prolific representatives in the national media.
In 2019, MND Research looked at some of the research that had been done into professional football and Motor Neurone Disease up to that point. The conclusion is that there is no single risk factor responsible for football’s apparent increased risk when compared to other sports, and there’s no evidence of a link between that increased risk and pesticides.
MND Research does, however, acknowledge a potential similarity in organophosphate exposure levels between footballers and farmers, another increased risk group.
Academia has also examined potential links between football and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) specifically. Multiple Italian studies between 2006 and 2010 indicated the possibility of a “soccer-specific” risk of ALS. In the middle of that half-decade, The Guardian reported that 51 footballers in Italy had died from ALS by 2008 – six times the population average.
Raffaele Guariniello, a Turin magistrate with the data to hand, investigated – among several other potential causes – the use of pesticides and fertilisers on Italy’s football pitches in the eighties and nineties. Frankly, the knowledge that children are the most susceptible to the negative effects of pesticides should be motivation enough to get to the bottom of it.
Pests kill football pitches and pesticides kill pests. Eradication is only made possible by the availability of alternatives and sport has made big strides since these studies were published.
Some clubs in the UK are starting to use more sustainable and often organic alternatives to pesticides and herbicides. They include the use of natural predators as well as organic fertilisers and the monitoring and “physical removal” of pests.
If you’re assuming Forest Green Rovers is one of those clubs, you’re right. Among a great many other environmental initiatives under shrinking violet eco-tycoon Dale Vince, the club’s pitch at the New Lawn in Gloucestershire is organic and pesticide free. I assume their alternative is not the physical removal of pests by flamethrower.
The staff at Forest Green and every groundsperson I’ve ever spoken to will tell you that maintaining a top-class football pitch isn’t easy at the best of times. Take away the option of chemical pesticides and the challenge only intensifies.
Herbicides are also a vital tool because weeds are a problem. There are alternatives here too, but as Connecticut academic Jason Henderson notes, controlling weeds is about more than just how a pitch looks:
“Weeds don’t tolerate foot traffic as well as turfgrasses, so they die first on heavily used surfaces such as athletic fields, leaving bare spots in high-traffic zones. As vegetative cover decreases, surfaces become harder, increasing athletes’ risk of injuries.”
All of this knowledge is easy to access and apply for groundspersons in the professional game but football is a massive participation sport too. Its roots extend far beneath the elite and they might just be the tastiest bit.
Understanding the complex realities of pesticide use in sport is an unfair expectation of the people who maintain council pitches and school playing fields and non-league surfaces everywhere. It might not even be feasible – yet – for football in its entirety to be fully sustainable when it comes to pitch management.
Part of the answer is the same as ever: the industry at the top must both lead and support the culture underneath. Elite football owes its very existence to the participation levels of the game from the grassroots up. Investment in research and funding should be obligatory.
The use of pesticides and herbicides is a tricky subject. It has lots of pitfalls and few answers. The evidence available is partial. The medical conclusions are far from certain and footballers face enough other risk factors for neurological diseases to make further research the most important immediate development.
But the environmental impact of chemical pollution is clear and football must continue its progress in reducing its contribution to that. Our sport is an entirely man-made construct. It’s not essential. We need to own our shit. We cannot continue to cause such damage in the name of enjoyment. It’s time for a more substantial pesticides plan.
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“We would like to help mitigate against any potential risks that may be linked to heading the ball, including injuries from head-to-head, elbow-to-head, or head-to-ground contact. We feel that it’s important to take a cautious approach at this level of the game whilst ongoing research continues in this area.
“Additionally, we also felt that it was important to bring matches across these age groups in line with our current heading guidance for training, which recommends that heading is removed or restricted at this level. We also continue to believe that reducing heading at this level can help to support the development of young players who are learning to improve their technical ability with the ball at their feet.”
The FA is to extend its trial ban on heading in matches for under-12s and below. James Kendall, the FA’s Director of Football Development, believes that restrictions on heading help technical player development as well as demonstrating caution while research continues.
Salty beef extracts
Does football need Fifa? Breakaway threat may test Infantino’s grip on global game (The Guardian)
Scratch the surface of women’s football and it is like Instagram v reality (The Guardian)
Focusing on Dele Alli’s football career misses the point – all that matters is he finds peace (i)
The House Always Wins (Kult)
Dessert
I do love a Mizuno boot. This is the Morelia Neo IV Beta.
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