Maracanã has uprooted grass and will use a mixture of natural and artificial turf in 2022

At 71 years of age, Maracanã will have a hybrid turf starting in 2022. For this, all the grass was removed, which radically changed the face of one of the main temples of the world sport.

With the break of Brazilian football, the administration of the stadium started this week the revitalization of the field, with the removal of the entire lawn and a 15 cm excavation – to remove clay and sand.

Then, probably starting on Monday (20), the soil will be leveled with the help of a laser and replanting will begin with natural grass, such as shorts, and polyethylene fibers (a plastic species). For this reason, it gained the name of hybrid turf, under the promise of offering more resistance after being trampled and efficient drainage.

“Then comes a treatment after planting with fertilizer, pest control and coverage with sand until the grass is completely closed”, says Paulo Azeredo, agronomist at the company Greenleaf.

Throughout this season, Maracanã was the target of criticism, including coaches Tite, from the Brazilian team, and Renato Gaúcho, before being fired from Flamengo.

In his outburst, Tite compared it to other arenas, Amazonas and Pernambuco, in October this year. Interestingly, the stadium entered the agenda while Tite praised the structure of Granja Comary, the home of the Brazilian team in Teresópolis (RJ).

“People, you can’t have Maracanã with the field it has, it’s against football, it’s against quality, it’s against the spectacle and everything we look for as football, to have good fields to charge coach, athlete, performance, qualified pass, reasoning, execution. I vented it here because this is incomprehensible,” said Tite.

“The courses we played were impeccable [citando os estádios de Manaus e Pernambuco, em que a Seleção jogou pelas Eliminatórias recentemente]. This field condition is very important.”

In July, after the rubro-negro team’s rout over São Paulo by 5-1, Renato Gaúcho asked for action. “It’s a boring thing to talk about. Opponents also like a good pitch. It’s difficult. I’m sad because Flamengo is harmed,” said Renato Gaúcho.

The forecast is that Maracanã will receive football matches from March 2022, probably the semifinal of the State Championship in Rio.

Ferj (State Federation of Rio de Janeiro) has not yet released the complete competition table, the last round of the group stage is scheduled for February 27th.

The estimated cost of the renovation is R$4 million, according to the stadium’s board of directors.

“It is a necessary intervention, which had as main factors the volume of games played in the stadium and also the climatic interference”, says Severiano Braga, CEO of Maracanã.

Since April 2019, the stadium has been managed by Flamengo and Fluminense. The concession contract signed with the government of Rio is valid until the middle of next year.

Under the current model, each club is responsible for 19 matches in the national championship and can participate in a maximum of eight phases in the knockout competition.

For this account, the current administrators of the stadium, Flamengo and Fluminense, can add a maximum guarantee of 54 games at home. The number should be even smaller, as both usually enter more advanced stages of the Copa do Brasil.