Soccer is the most followed and most watch sports event in the world. This means that everything around the game will be in high demand. Ranging from the number of young people wanting to know how to play the game, to people already in the game trying to learn something new or some area of the game that is not well understood to them.
The professional soccer field size is what many still find difficult to understand to date. This is because when they play at the different stadiums, they discover that the sizes are sometimes different and they have an explanation for this difference in size. This is allowed in the game by the football world governing body, FIFA as long as it does not exceed the recommended size stated by FIFA.
Some stadia seem to be small in terms of the width but can’t be smaller on both sides. To start with, the recommended professional soccer field size by FIFA is that the soccer field should not be more than 100-110m in length and also 64-73m in width. This is a standard that many international stadia have adhered to.
Because soccer is a game that has a wide range of followership and publicity, not all stadia can be verified to follow this specification, but for every event hosted by FIFA, the sizes are reconfirmed to ensure that it is the correct size that is used.
Other things that are considered in a stadium to be used is the quality of the grass on the pitch. It is often seen in some places where synthetic grass is used in the field. This is not common in Europe and most American top stadia.
It is expected that natural grass will be used and that will be the only generally acceptable type of pitch used for international competition. There has been a consistent argument about a myth on the size of soccer pitches affecting the play in these pitches.
Some professional soccer field size has been seen to influence how the home team of that field have an unfair advantage which is actually not true because all field size is within the specification given by FIFA.
Considering some of the professional soccer field sizes in top European clubs have shown that most have very similar field size. Manchester United have a soccer field of size 106m by 69m. This is the biggest in England and close to the maximum size recommended.
Another very big stadium size is that of Barcelona that has a size of 105m by 68m. This is the same as Arsenal’s Emirate Stadium and Manchester City’s Etihad stadium. From this given examples, it could be seen that most top stadia have similar sizes so the myth around some stadia being very big is most likely related to the atmosphere the fans at the match venue create which is influenced by the seating capacity and tradition of the club that use the stadium.
Fans don’t expect to go to a place like Anfield and expect the Liverpool red armies to be quite or Camp Nou to be silent when Barcelona players are all out on a night like the Champions League night. This is in addition to the fact that these stadia can take close to 100,000 people at Camp Nou with the majority backing the home side.