How’s the 2024-2025 season going?

shirivelli said:
Bad grass fields do impact games in several ways. Below are the main observations from my playing days and recent experiences:
  • If one team plays more tiki-taka passing soccer versus the other, their effectiveness is reduced with poor grass conditions.
  • If one team plays more physical soccer versus the other, it benefits them because the balls are bouncier and more often out of control, making it easier for the physical team to fight for possession.
  • If one team is used to having practices and games on Artificial Turf (AG) versus the other, it harms them more on grass fields, especially bad ones. Many teams from NorCal practice and play mostly on AG fields, so bad grass fields are their worst nightmare.
Of course, this only matters when two teams are closely matched, making a slight difference and benefiting during the match.
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I’m pretty sure most of every SoCal team NL and RL team practices on AG and most games are played on AG…

I’ve seen the crap fields in Oceanside play an adverse role against our team during blues cup where the patches caused a reaction ball type bounce that lead to being scored on, but that’s part of the game unfortunately. Kids across the world play in worse conditions and I’m sure not of them being this up as a reason for losing.

Both teams have to play on the same field and both teams for the most part practice on the same medium. Still an excuse in the end but as a parent and fan of my team I’m going to be salty about it.

Better luck next time
 
SuperSoccerStar said:
Extremely disappointed in the quality of fields at the SD ECNL Showcase. I thought ECNL had standards. Surf Sports of whoever manages these fields should be ashamed. Having teams travel to play on this crap is a shame. Half dirt and half grass. Impossible to make a clean pass as it goes from dirt to grass to dirt. Girls getting hurt all over the place. Yellow cards all over the place because the crap fields lead to boot ball and balls bouncing all over the place. Absolutely unacceptable. There are a couple great fields and the rest are absolutely unacceptable. They didn’t even bother re-striping them for the showcase.
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I checked with the facilities management and they responded that they were embarrassed and admitted that half of the fields were as described above. The facility was grossly over used and they got behind the 8 ball for this event. I suspect even they didn’t realize how bad it would be. Starting in December they are replacing the grass on the bad fields which include the back fields and expect it to be pristine by the time of playoffs. The east side of the facility was wonderful so it truely was great fields or horrible fields. Not much in between.
 
Carlsbad7 said:
It impacts both sides evenly.
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It actually doesn’t. Teams that play the ball “over the top” don’t have to adjust much. Teams like Surf that do virtually nothing but play the ball on the ground didn’t see a rolling ball the entire game when played on some of those fields. I saw the center back pass to their right back and it must have bounced two feet in the air in the middle of rolling to the player. The ironic thing is the bad fields probably affect Surf teams more than any team and you can be sure, the Surf coaches could be heard saying unkind things about the condition of the fields. Dribbling was virtually impossible because you just didn’t know where the ball would be from touch to touch.
 
Surfer_dad said:
It actually doesn’t. Teams that play the ball “over the top” don’t have to adjust much. Teams like Surf that do virtually nothing but play the ball on the ground didn’t see a rolling ball the entire game when played on some of those fields. I saw the center back pass to their right back and it must have bounced two feet in the air in the middle of rolling to the player. The ironic thing is the bad fields probably affect Surf teams more than any team and you can be sure, the Surf coaches could be heard saying unkind things about the condition of the fields. Dribbling was virtually impossible because you just didn’t know where the ball would be from touch to touch.
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Did the poor fields sneak up on you like some kind of green ninja?

You have the homefield advantage of knowing what the fields would look like weeks before you played on them.

Adjust your game to the conditions.
 
Surfer_dad said:
I checked with the facilities management and they responded that they were embarrassed and admitted that half of the fields were as described above. The facility was grossly over used and they got behind the 8 ball for this event. I suspect even they didn’t realize how bad it would be. Starting in December they are replacing the grass on the bad fields which include the back fields and expect it to be pristine by the time of playoffs. The east side of the facility was wonderful so it truely was great fields or horrible fields. Not much in between.
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This is good to hear. As long as they agreed it was not ok and have an action plan to fix it that makes me happy. Honestly these fields at Del Mar are the pride of SoCal now. There are no real grass fields that can touch these in my opinion when they are maintained to the standards they recently set with them and I think that's why everyone was so blown away by the conditions at the showcase. The back fields or the letter fields were so bad they shouldn't of been played on. The number fields mentioned above were amazing compared to those letter fields. The excuse saying well both teams played on them so it doesn't effect anything is absolutely ridiculous. If one team is a possession based team and the other is not then the possession based team was greatly effected. Hopefully the plan is to make the fields larger for playoffs as well as those tiny fields are just too small.
 
SuperSoccerStar said:
This is good to hear. As long as they agreed it was not ok and have an action plan to fix it that makes me happy. Honestly these fields at Del Mar are the pride of SoCal now. There are no real grass fields that can touch these in my opinion when they are maintained to the standards they recently set with them and I think that's why everyone was so blown away by the conditions at the showcase. The back fields or the letter fields were so bad they shouldn't have been played on. The number fields mentioned above were amazing compared to those letter fields. The excuse saying well both teams played on them so it doesn't effect anything is absolutely ridiculous. If one team is a possession based team and the other is not then the possession based team was greatly effected. Hopefully the plan is to make the fields larger for playoffs as well as those tiny fields are just too small.
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Styles make fights. Teams need to adapt. It can’t be one style of play every match. Sometimes you need to play direct, sometimes physical, and when needed use your passing where it gives you advantage. It sounds like everyone here is complaining that the square peg didn’t fit in the round hole that they wanted.
 
TeamDadJokes said:
Styles make fights. Teams need to adapt. It can’t be one style of play every match. Sometimes you need to play direct, sometimes physical, and when needed use your passing where it gives you advantage. It sounds like everyone here is complaining that the square peg didn’t fit in the round hole that they wanted.
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Well, you also need the caliber of players to play certain style of game (happens in the pros also). The complaint is the terrible field.
 
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