Real stay home: Salt Lake will face Real Madrid on Rice-Eccles field

In the end, Real Salt Lake decided to stay home.

The club announced Tuesday that its highly anticipated exhibition match against Real Madrid will be played at Rice-Eccles Stadium on Aug. 12, not LaVell Edwards Stadium.

RSL was originally enticed with playing the match in Provo because of the 20,000 extra seats and the natural grass playing surface. Those two attractions, however, weren't enough to sway the club to move the game.

"Logistically Rice-Eccles was a much better fit," said Real general manager Steve Pastorino, who added that, "the university has been a great partner throughout these negotiations and made it very clear they didn't want to see the game leave the stadium they consider Real Salt Lake's home."

RSL owner Dave Checketts will make an official announcement at a press conference this afternoon, and he'll be joined by several Real Madrid executives, including vice president of sport Emilio Butragueno.

Hosting the game at Rice-Eccles Stadium isn't cheap. Real Madrid made it very clear they would not play on an artificial playing surface, so Real Salt Lake must pay to have a temporary natural grass playing surface installed at the U.

Last May, a temporary field was laid at a cost of $130,000 so Rice-Eccles Stadium could host a World Cup qualifying match between the United States and Costa Rica. The surface seemed to hold up adequately, but a few players did express concern about the sod slipping in a few places.

Tremonton-based company Chanshare Farms provided the 93,000-square-foot playing surface last year and will be doing so again this year. Chanshare Farms executives are confident the field will hold up better this time.

For the qualifying match, the sod farm only had about three months notification, not nearly enough time to grow a quality, mature field. According to Pastorino, Chanshare Farms has a field ready for delivery that's been growing for nearly a year. That extra maturity in the sod should make a huge difference.

Another reason both parties are more confident about installing grass again is because they've learned their lesson. There were four games played on the surface last year, but that won't be the case this time around.

"We're not even looking at grass here from the perspective of let's put it down for three weeks or a month and really get the maximum value," said Pastorino in an interview last week. "It would be installed on a schedule that would allow it to be ideal for one day, and then we'd start pulling it out the next day."

The sod will also likely be installed in a slightly different manner to minimize the number of seams in the middle of the field.

Individual tickets for the Real Madrid match currently aren't on sale. The organization is selling prorated season ticket packages that include the Real Madrid game. For more information call 1-866-9SOCCER. Season ticket holders get to keep their same seat for the Real Madrid game and will use their Bonus Game A tickets.

---

E-mail: jedward@desnews.com