By Andrew Warshaw
September 16 – Canadian star Kaylyn Kyle is the latest player to become involved in the row over using synthetic turf at next year’s women’s World Cup. Kyle is reported to have been signed up by FieldTurf, the company whose product is being employed at a majority of the six stadiums being used for the tournament.
According to local reports, the midfielder, who plays for the Houston Dash, will be featured in coming weeks in a promotional campaign.
Her endorsement deal comes as a group of more than 40 prominent internationals from at least 12 countries – none of them Canadian – are demanding that FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association drop plans to use artificial pitches at next year’s World Cup, which runs from June 6 to July 5, and use natural grass instead, arguing the move is tantamount to gender discrimination and that synthetic surfaces induce extra wear and tear on the body.
Canadian Soccer Association officials counter strongly that some men’s teams in the MLS play on artificial turf and that there were no issues with using it at last year’s Under-20 Women’s World Cup, also in Canada.
Brant Feldman, Kyle’s agent, was quoted as saying: “I don’t know if it’s gender discrimination. Maybe is it sport discrimination? It seems like a lame argument to me.”
Hampton Dellinger, a US lawyer working with several of the players opposed to playing on artificial pitches at the tournament, dismissed Kyle’s endorsement. “No endorsement deal for Kaylyn Kyle can alter Canadian laws prohibiting the kind of sexism that drove FIFA and Canada to stage the women’s World Cup under conditions male players haven’t been and won’t be subjected to,” he said in a statement.
“And no payout can change the fact that artificial turf can injure elite players in unique and painful ways. Before her recent money deal, Ms. Kyle bore witness to the dangers posed by a plastic pitch. The tweet of her turf-burned legs is a “smoking shin” that provides further evidence for why the world’s best female players deserve natural grass. The tweet is now gone from Kyle’s feed but FieldTurf, the Canadian Soccer Association and FIFA cannot erase these stubborn facts: artificial turf is considered a second class surface for World Cup soccer and forcing women to play their premier event on it is flat wrong as well as illegal.”
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