The Spanish complaints about the pitch in Gdansk are legit. Now we'll see how the groundskeeper authorities in Gdansk respond to issues of grass length, as they not only host the Spanish team in that Polish city for this second match, all three group matches are in this Hansea League port city for the Iberians.
More attention needs to be paid to this. Four years ago I watched in great dismay as the crews ripped up the pitch in Basel's Euro 2008 St. Jakob Park to ready it for the semifinal match less than 30 hours later. I'm serious. It was dismally cool and raining and they hadn't yet removed the old turf although it was all mostly in large rolls waiting to be hauled off. I asked to see the new turf (it was not anywhere visible) and was relatively politely rebuffed.
Two days later watching the semifinal in Basel I watched several keep slips as players of both sides lost their footing on this newly laid grass field. It looked like several corners came up.
If I was a player, I'd sure hate to tear my ACL and lose 7 - 9 months to rehab just because this sort of thing is not well planned and executed at this highest level tournament.
It all seemed rather odd to me. Rather dicey, rather expensive, and rather unnecessary. The focus in Basel seemed to be solely on a nice, pristine color of green for the TV and photojournalists versus a truly playable pitch -- no matter what the hues. To my knowledge the pitch was removed twice and replaced twice during Euro 2008 in Basel. All in less than a fortnight.
This, in short, was lunacy. it certainly did not lead to better ball play.
