RPL blames Human Factor

The poor state of Russia's football pitches, which players have compared to bombsites and vegetable patches, is down to the human factor, the Premier League's executive director said Tuesday. Stars are lining up to criticize the state of the pitches in Russia after Anzhi’s Roberto Carlos and Samuel Eto’o blasted the conditions, while Lokomotiv striker Roman Pavlyuchenko claimed Rubin Kazan’s pitch is fit only for rugby. Lokomotiv's weather-churned pitch resembled a bombsite last weekend, Zenit midfielder Andrei Arshavin said. "It's not the kind of situation when you need to save every kopeck," Sergei Cheban said. "People are really ready to invest [in pitches] to get the result. But unfortunately, due to the lack of professionalism among the [stadium] staff sometimes it happens that possibilities [to prepare good-quality surfaces] aren't realized." Cheban said poor planning meant training surfaces are often in better shape than stadium pitches. "It's nonsense. It would seem that the turf at the arenas has an entire week to recover, but it turns out to be worse than at the training base." "The person who is responsible for this should really care about his job and live the profession." The Russian league switched to a fall-spring schedule in 2011 to fall into line with European leagues. Many players including Dynamo Moscow midfielder Igor Semshov ridiculed that decision as defying the country's natural weather patterns. The Europeans, Semshov said, "play on green pitches, but we play on brown ones.” “People start changing things with absolutely no knowledge of the climatic conditions. And they don’t know what country we live in,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview last week.