KOZHIKODE: It has taken the better part of a decade and nearly `21 crore. But football fans who were expecting the renovation of the EMS Corporation Stadium to result in top quality football returning to the city are likely to have to wait a lot longer.
The official line is that the renovation of the stadium is complete and it is ready to host international events. But, the Kerala Football Association (KFA) honchos are pronouncing a much more damning verdict. “The turf that you have at the stadium is not even fit to host a national event. In the first match, a footballer sustained a hamstring injury after just 50 minutes and it was due to the turf. Another turf-related injury happened on Monday and consequently we decided to shift some of the matches to the Medical College Stadium. I understand that a lot of money has been spent on the stadium, but if the turf is that bad, all that is useless,” KFA secretary P Anil Kumar said on Tuesday. Games officials confirmed that four matches had been shifted to the Medical College Stadium though they did not reveal the reason behind changing the schedule. However, Kozhikode District Football Association (KDFA) secretary P Haridas said that the turf damage was largely due to lack of irrigation.
He claimed that the damage was not long term and that the turf would be of requisite standards by the time the Sait Nagjee Cup would come calling in May.
“The most important part of maintaining a turf is irrigation and we were unable to do that due to unavailability of water. But we are close to figuring out a solution to this and we will get the turf ready soon. It does not take too much time to get the turf back to full health - a month with proper irrigation will do,” he said.
Former football C Umar, who is the venue operation manager at the stadium, blamed the condition of the turf on the last-minute nature of preparations. “We had very little time to get the turf ready for the games. Then there was thefact that we had a water crunch when the State School Arts Festival was going on in the city. The Corporation had to divert its resources for the fest and we were unable to water the turf during those days,” he said.