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| June 29, 2006 | Thursday | Jumadi-ul-Sani 2, 1427 |
Teams prevented from training on relaid pitches
BERLIN, June 28: Ukraine and Italy will not be allowed to train on the pitch at Hamburg before they meet each other there in the World Cup quarter-final on Friday, FIFA said on Wednesday.
The pitch at Hamburg has been showing considerable signs of wear during the World Cup and several sections of it have been replaced prior to Friday's game.
FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said: “Parts of the pitch have been re-laid at Hamburg and as a result it needs to be protected so the teams will not train there. They will continue training at their own venues.”
Concerns have also been raised about the state of the pitch at Gelsenkirchen where England meet Portugal in their quarter-final on Saturday and neither team is expected to be able to train there either.
Argentina, who meet hosts Germany in another quarter-final at Berlin's Olympiastadion on Friday have told FIFA they have no plans to train at the stadium before the match.
Germany, meanwhile, will continue training at their base situated within the Olympic complex, but not on the pitch itself.
Some of the pitches at the 12 venues during the tournament have given cause for concern during the opening 56 games.
Wolfgang Niersbach, vice-president of the German World Cup organising committee, said last week there were problems with the pitches in Hamburg, Cologne and Gelsenkirchen.
“We accept that the state of some of the pitches has not always been perfect,” he said.
All the pitches were laid at the end of the German domestic league season in May using a mixture of grass and turf grown in either Darmstadt and the Netherlands.
But heavy rain soon after they were laid followed by extremely hot and dry weather afterwards has affected the growth of the grass in some areas of some of the pitches.—Reuters
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