There won't be grass, but CenturyLink Field will have a new turf for the 2012 Seattle Sounders season. The latest generation of FieldTurf will be laid down in February, shortly after the end of the Seahawks season and just in time for the Sounders to get used to it prior to their game against Santos Laguna on March 7.

Newcastle held many discussions with Orlando officials yesterday, citing concerns with the pitch at the Citrus Bowl. Jose Enrique will play tonight When tonight's game was being set up back in April, Newcastle had agreed they would be playing on a temporary grass surface, and those temporary grass surfaces were used a lot to cover [.

Coincidently, my fellow blogger Andy Brouwer blogged on the dismay pitch surface that staged a Cambodian league clash featuring Phnom Penh Crown, one of the guest teams invited for the Singapore Cup.

To expect professional players to play on this surface and to perform at a sufficiently high level is simply not on.

It seems generally accepted in the MLS community, if not the US Soccer community, that soccer specific stadiums are key to the growth of soccer in the USA.

The reasons are many, and include everything from the emotionally-relevant display of faith in the sport in this country, to the very practical ownership of parking and other associated revenue streams.

Thanks to Joshua Mayers' reporting, we know the possibility of installing grass at Qwest Field is formally being explored. To get a little more information about the situation, I talked to Sounders GM Adrian Hanauer.

First, a little background. The current FieldTurf was installed before the 2009 soccer season.

Most people would say that CD Saprissa's artificial turf gives them a significant home advantage. But Saprissa's stadium has always been intimidating to visiting teams in the days when it still had a grass surface. Assuming everything else equal, how significant is the difference in match results from the grass pitch and artificial pitch eras?