THE CANADIAN PRESS
DETROIT — The natural grass field that has been rolled out over the artificial turf at Ford Field wasn’t a hit with Canada ahead of Tuesday’s CONCACAF Gold Cup opener against the United States.
"It’s a bit dead, the ball dies very quickly and there’s some gaps in it," said Canadian coach Stephen Hart. "Hopefully they get that repaired. But we’ve had experience on these types of fields before, it’s going to rip up, it’s going to pull up, there’s going to be slipping and sliding. Hopefully they’ll slip and slide and not us."
Canada practised for 45 minutes Monday on the field that had been trucked in from Rhode Island and laid over a process that took four days at the stadium normally home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions. The Canadians play at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday, following the 6 p.m. Guadeloupe-Panama game.
"They just laid it so it’s going to be interesting come the second game," said Canadian midfielder Dwayne De Rosario. "It takes a while to get rooted and there’s a first game before us and hopefully it doesn’t get chewed up too much.
"There’s no bounce to the grass and it’s slow so hopefully it will favour us in terms of keeping the ball on the ground and at the end of the day both teams have to play on it."
The sod had to be laid at the last minute because Ford Field is a domed stadium, with no natural light.
Canada hasn’t played in a domed stadium since at least 1995. They played in the SkyDome Cup that year at Toronto’s Rogers Centre — then known as SkyDome.
"Indoors is cool, the turf is OK," said midfielder Will Johnson. "I don’t know if you put grass down on a pitch like this if you can make it bounce, so the ball doesn’t bounce, it’s a little heavy and sliding around a little bit, but it was a little wet. Maybe by (Tuesday) night it will dry up and have a little time to stick together a little more. Today it was so-so, I’ve played on worse."
The Americans played on the same grass-over-turf surface on Saturday for their friendly against Spain at Gillette Stadium — normally home to the NFL’s New England Patriots. The Americans lost to 4-0 to the defending World Cup champions.
Johnson doesn’t believe playing on that surface gives the U.S. a significant advantage.
"I don’t think it’s such a factor that it’s a game-changer, if anything it’s a slight advantage, but it’s not going win them or lose them the game," Johnson said.
Toronto’s Rogers Centre also laid natural grass over artificial turf when Manchester United played Celtic last summer with the roof open.
On the injury front, Canada is hurting ahead of its opener.
"We have a couple of injury concerns," Hart told a media conference call earlier in the day. "We’re just waiting on some fitness tests which we’ll conduct later today and decisions will be made."
Hart would not say who was injured. Midfielder Julian de Guzman missed training Sunday but practised Monday.
The coach did confirm that Burnley defender David Edgar had been added to the 23-man squad in place of Dejan Jakovic, who has been ruled out of the tournament after injuring his hamstring in last week’s exhibition tie with Ecuador.
"It takes away the depth in the position," said Hart, noting that Toronto FC defender Adrian Cann was also unavailable through injury.
Edgar, midfielder Issey Nakajima-Farran and goalkeeper Haidar Al-Shaibani are named in the Canadian squad but will not join the team unless there is an injury, Hart said.
That’s because the Gold Cup doesn’t allow everyone on the roster to dress and Hart didn’t want to bring players in to watch from the stands.
"We’ve travelled with 20," he said.
Hart said he expects he will change up his formation in the three pool games, depending on who is in form.
Canada plays Guadeloupe and Panama after the American game.
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With files from Neil Davidson