What's wrong with the turf at the Zenit stadium? Dead field About field vibration

As an agronomist at one of the Moscow football stadiums explained to RBC, “even the best field can be ruined in three days.” According to him, there can be many reasons, for example, incorrect agricultural practices. “Weather conditions also have a big impact,” he adds. “The field is a living organism.” To give an accurate assessment of what is happening at Krestovsky, says RBC’s interlocutor, it is necessary to take soil samples and check how the lawn was cared for: “Maybe people just went out onto the field and spread the infection with their boots.”

However, the chief agronomist of Zenit, Konstantin Kreminsky, is confident that the issue is not the weather conditions, but the contractor hired by the previous general contractor Inzhtransstroy SPb (he was replaced by the Metrostroy company in August 2016). Kreminsky also mentions the name of that contractor - this is the Bamard company. “For nine months... aeration was not carried out even once. “In addition, the contractor hired by the city did not prepare the field well for winter—no treatment with plant protection products was done.” And when the retractable field was pushed inside the bowl at the end of February and the snow was melted, the lawn was ruined. “We saw various fungal diseases, a lot of mold,” sums up the Zenit agronomist.

Shallow "trough"

Bamard received the contract to create a field for Krestovsky in the spring of 2016, having won a tender announced by the Inzhtransstroy SPb company. According to a representative of one of the companies participating in the tender, all the specialized market players wanted to work at the largest arena in St. Petersburg - the Russian Intersportstroy, Sport and Co., Procyon, Bamard, the British company SIS, the Slovak Engo. “This is a very attractive and high-status contract,” says RBC’s interlocutor, estimating the cost of the design and installation of such a turnkey lawn at €1.8-3 million.

All tender documentation, as well as the conditions offered by the winner, are a commercial secret. Inzhtransstroy SPb and Bamard refused to answer questions about the cost of the contract.

A representative of the company participating in the tender claims that the problems with the field were predictable. And the entire market, including the contractor company, knew about this, he says.

“The organizer of the competition, the general contractor for the construction of the Inzhtransstroy St. Petersburg stadium, outlined in the technical specifications the parameters that initially made the implementation of the work difficult,” says RBC’s interlocutor in one of the companies. The main problem was the depth of the so-called trough, in which the lawn with all the “internal engineering” is located. “Pie” of a standard field (grass and at least three layers of sand and crushed stone with communications providing drainage and heating. - RBC) has a depth of 45 cm, in the terms of reference for “St. Petersburg” it was 40 cm,” says RBC’s interlocutor. “This requires a non-standard, even unique solution.”

Field of the St. Petersburg stadium. March 2017 (Photo: Anton Vaganov / TASS)

According to the source, the companies participating in the competition drew the customer’s attention to this, but the parameters of the technical specifications remained unchanged. RBC’s source at Inzhtransstroy SPb assures that it was impossible to change the terms of reference: “The technical parameters, including the depth of the “trough”, were approved within the framework of the entire project by the customer - St. Petersburg, and it was impossible to change anything. All dimensions and parameters of the field were specified in the project. Taking into account the fact that the field was planned as a complex retractable structure, it was impossible to change the design parameters, the same depth, so we worked within the framework of the agreed project.”

According to the interlocutor at Inzhtransstroy SPb, the Bamard company proposed a well-founded technical solution to this problem, which was accepted.

Well-connected contractor

An RBC source familiar with the details of choosing a contractor for the Krestovsky lawn says that Bamard “lobbied at the highest level.” “The Ministry of Sports has long been cooperating with Bamard on a program for the construction of artificial turf fields, and Mutko personally recommended that clubs and regional authorities building new stadiums use the services of this Russian company,” he says. RBC was unable to obtain confirmation of this information. The Ministry of Sports has not yet responded to RBC's request.

​Bamard is one of the largest Russian manufacturers of flooring for business centers, cinemas, and hotels. The company is indeed one of the five largest suppliers of sports surfaces, a representative of another large company with a similar specialization confirmed to RBC. As follows from the SPARK database, Bamard actively participates in tenders for government contracts, mainly for the supply and installation of artificial fields. Since 2013, the company has won 79 tenders for government contracts worth RUB 1.9 billion. According to data from the Bamarda website, the company has supplied more than 70 full-size artificial football fields to sports facilities in different regions of Russia.

However, the company has dealt with natural lawns only in a few cases. “They are mainly engaged in artificial football fields, multifunctional sports grounds - for basketball, volleyball, handball. Natural turf for football is not their main business,” says a representative of another player in this market. The official website of Bamarda states that the company laid natural fields on three large projects - at the Lokomotiv stadium in Cherkizovo, at the Petrovsky stadium in St. Petersburg, and at the Khimki Arena in the Moscow region.

​Over the past three years, the company has also won tenders for the reconstruction of the Chaika and Lokomotiv stadiums in Voronezh (RUB 12 million), a site in Samara (the reserve field of the Metallurg stadium, RUB 44.9 million), and the Trud stadium "in Tolyatti (RUB 76 million), as well as for the creation of a lawn at the Central Stadium in Yekaterinburg. The stadium in the Urals, like the lawn in St. Petersburg, will host the 2018 FIFA World Cup games. The remaining fields mentioned will be training fields for the teams participating in the World Cup. According to a representative of Bamard, the company also laid natural lawns in Astrakhan (Volgar Stadium) and Krasnodar (Central Stadium). “If we did not have the necessary competence, no one would have entrusted us with a lawn in St. Petersburg.” , he says.

The field in Yekaterinburg began to be developed on April 1, the first grass sowing will take place on July 1. The official delivery date for the entire stadium under the contract is December 31, 2017, and the first matches are scheduled for April-May 2018.

According to media reports, the company laid natural turf in Kazan at the Kazan Arena, but problems arose with it there too. The finalists of the 2016 Russian Cup, Zenit and CSKA, were prohibited from conducting pre-match training on the field, so as not to completely “kill” the lawn. After the match in May 2016, it was decided to re-lay the stadium's lawn - and this was entrusted to another company. In Bamard, the “loss of Kazan” is associated with a change of leadership at the local football club “Rubin”. “The new general director of the club had already worked with another company for laying turf, and he ordered the re-laying of the field at the Kazan Arena,” he says.

​Unattended lawn

General Director of “Bamard” Alexander Prytkov​ told RBC that when the Krestovsky field was handed over, all the necessary engineering systems were in working order, and the stadium employees have everything they need to maintain the field. “The question is not the technology of sowing this or that lawn; The situation largely depends on the quality and correct application of agrotechnical measures at these sites,” he said.

This statement contradicts the statement of the Zenit agronomist, who, judging by his words, is sure that until the last moment, that is, until the end of February, “Bamard” should have been responsible for the quality of the lawn. Prytkov confirms that this was the case, but does not agree with the conclusion of the football club employee. “We sowed the football field in June 2016 and handed it over to the contractor in September. But even after that, according to the contract, we maintained it - there is a magazine with a feeding and watering schedule,” says Prytkov. “Wintering the lawn outside is a normal practice; the grass can withstand frosts even at minus 20 degrees.”

According to Prytkov, the lawn is in satisfactory condition after wintering. Visible deficiencies in the coating are a natural consequence of winter, and the general director of Bamard explains the words of the Zenit agronomist with the desire of the football club to “play it safe.” “Given that the Confederations Cup games will be held at the stadium, Zenit does not want to take responsibility for the condition of the lawn, this is a political issue,” Prytkov told RBC. According to him, the company has the results of independent examinations, which indicate that there is no fungus or mold in the soil of the new stadium after wintering the lawn.

Retractable field of the St. Petersburg stadium (Photo: Mikhail Kireev / RIA Novosti)

Problem stadium

Construction of the new Zenit stadium on Krestovsky Island began in 2007. The customer of the construction was the mayor's office of St. Petersburg. Initially, the cost of construction was estimated at 14 billion rubles, and the stadium itself was promised to be put into operation in 2009.

However, the project and its budget were subsequently adjusted several times. As a result, Krestovsky became one of the most expensive stadiums in the world and the most expensive in Russian history. By the time of delivery, its cost was about 44 billion rubles.

This amount will definitely increase, admits Zenit, which has taken over the management of the stadium. The amount of additional costs depends on the scale of the problems, including those with the lawn.

Zenit General Director Maxim Mitrofanov said in an interview with Fontanka that Zenit has already invested 1 billion rubles in “finishing up” its new stadium, and in total, according to the football club’s estimates, in the first two years of operation it will be necessary to spend 5 .5 billion rub. to bring the stadium into ideal condition. “We are ready to bring it to fruition and plan to eventually make it Zenit’s home, but we understand that objectively this will not happen before the 2019/20 season,” Mitrofanov said.

Replacing the turf at Krestovsky, if it is really needed, could cost Zenit the full cost of its development and installation, that is, up to €3 million, according to a representative of one of the companies that participated in the tender for the supply of turf. However, he found it difficult to name the exact amount. “We don’t know exactly what needs to be fixed,” he says. “A football field is not only a lawn with grass, but also internal utilities, several complex drainage layers, their condition cannot be judged from photographs.”

A representative of another company participating in the tender for the supply of Krestovsky lawn says that it is theoretically possible to lay the field along with all internal communications in a “trough” that is not deep enough, but this carries potential risks. “You see, there are standard technological solutions for laying football lawns that are used all over the world and according to which we can guarantee the high-quality functioning of all systems with proper care,” explains RBC’s interlocutor. — Surely you can squeeze the “pie” into a container that is not deep enough, but, firstly, adapting technologies to non-standard sizes will cost more, and secondly, no one knows how such a unique lawn will behave during operation: maybe everything will be fine, but maybe you will have to constantly change and repair something.”

Alexander Prytkov assures that nothing will have to be changed and all internal communications of the lawn will work properly. “This is truly a very complex engineering facility, the field has a very shallow foundation - there are no analogues in the world, but we are confident in our work,” he says.

Turf laying experts interviewed by RBC claim that in an already built stadium, it is impossible to “adjust” the field to standard dimensions, that is, to make the “trough” deeper - this means that the entire stadium will have to be rebuilt.

On the completion of the construction of the Zenit Arena stadium, which during its construction gained fame as perhaps the most expensive and scandalous sports facility in the modern history of Russia. The construction of this stadium has already taken more than 10 years and more than 40 billion rubles. Zenit Arena should become one of 12 venues for the World Cup, which will be held in our country in the summer of 2018.

Recently, Zenit head coach Mircea Lucescu said that the field of the new stadium in St. Petersburg is unsuitable even for training. The RBC publication figured out who is to blame for the fact that football cannot be played in the most expensive football stadium in the country.

The first reports that the lawn at the most famous long-term construction site in St. Petersburg was in terrible condition appeared on social networks in early April. The photographs show that the grass has turned yellow and there are numerous bald spots on the field. The Zenit management was forced to admit: the field was in substandard condition.

Zenit's chief agronomist, Konstantin Kreminsky, is confident that the issue is not the weather conditions, but the contractor hired by the previous general contractor, Inzhtransstroy SPb.

- For nine months... aeration was not carried out even once. In addition, the contractor hired by the city did not prepare the field well for winter - no treatment with plant protection products was done. And when the retractable field was pushed inside the bowl at the end of February and the snow was melted, the lawn was ruined. We saw various fungal diseases, a lot of mold,” a Zenit agronomist told the publication.

Bamard received the contract to create a field for Krestovsky in the spring of 2016, having won a tender announced by the Inzhtransstroy SPb company. An RBC source familiar with the details of choosing a contractor for the Krestovsky lawn says that Bamard “lobbied at the highest level.”

Anton Vaganov / TASS

"Bamard" is one of the largest Russian manufacturers of flooring for business centers, cinemas, and hotels. However, the company has dealt with natural lawns only in a few cases.

According to media reports, the company laid natural turf in Kazan at the Kazan Arena, but problems arose with it there too. The finalists of the 2016 Russian Cup - Zenit and CSKA - were prohibited from conducting pre-match training on the field, so as not to completely “kill” the lawn. After the match in May 2016, it was decided to re-lay the stadium's lawn - and this was entrusted to another company.

According to experts, replacing the turf at Krestovsky, if it is really needed, could cost Zenit the full cost of its development and installation, that is, up to € 3 million.

Turf laying experts interviewed by RBC claim that in an already built stadium, it is impossible to “adjust” the field to standard dimensions, that is, to make the “trough” deeper - this means that the entire stadium will have to be rebuilt.

• The capacity of the Zenit Arena stadium is 67,800 spectators. At the same time, the accessibility of the new stadium is still in question - most of the fans are supposed to be transported by metro. A new station “Novokrestovskaya” is being built especially for this purpose, which is due to open in 2018.
• Investigative authorities managed to initiate several criminal cases related to theft during the construction of the stadium. As part of one of them, the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg, Marat Oganesyan, was detained. He is accused of theft committed in 2014 in the amount of more than 50 million rubles. when the general contractor concludes an agreement with one of the companies for the supply of video boards for the stadium.
• In order to meet the deadline for completing the construction of the stadium, this year the government of St. Petersburg decided to allocate funds for the Zenit Arena stadium by more than halving the funds allocated for the construction of schools, kindergartens and other social facilities.

A federal-scale conflict over substandard turf at the St. Petersburg Zenit Arena may well continue in Yekaterinburg and affect the preparation of the Central Stadium for hosting matches of the FIFA World Cup in 2018. The Bamard company, which was also a contractor at the arena in the northern capital, began work on equipping a football field at the main sports facility in the region. Experts and the athletes themselves point out that due to the condition of the lawn at Zenit’s home stadium, it is virtually impossible to host RFPL championship games - the field does not even meet the minimum quality criteria. But when concluding a contract for work in Yekaterinburg, the general contractor for reconstruction, the Sinara-Development company Dmitry Pumpyansky, this circumstance did not bother me. Even the Moscow City Hall’s inclusion of “Bamard” in the register of unscrupulous contractors did not stop the customer. The company was blacklisted due to a failed government contract worth 200 million rubles to create a football field in Zelenograd. The football community of Yekaterinburg, meanwhile, is waiting with bated breath for the results of Bamard’s work by the beginning of winter.

Representatives of the sports community of the Sverdlovsk region fear the failure of the project to reconstruct the Central Stadium (Ekaterinburg Arena) for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The work on the creation of a football field began the day before, the Bamard Company JSC, which has earned a scandalous reputation (owned by Olga Moskaleva), whose activities, among other things, are associated with the problems of the Zenit Arena built in St. Petersburg.

Zenit Arena

“The field in Yekaterinburg will be built using standard technologies and traditionally consist of several layers. A bedding of sand is already laid on the earthen base to level the surface of the field. Next, a waterproof membrane, a lattice system for stabilizing the lawn, crushed stone of several fractions and final soil will be placed. Additionally, irrigation, drainage and heating systems will be installed. At the final stage, which will begin in July of this year, it is planned to sow grass,” says a sports official familiar with the circumstances about the project.

It is worth noting that the Bamard company is a subcontractor, even despite being included in the register of unscrupulous contractors. The corresponding decision was made by the department of the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the city of Moscow on April 3 of this year. Back in 2015, the company was supposed to commission a football field in the Staroe Kryukovo district in Zelenograd, but this did not happen in 2016. By a court decision, the Moscow Construction Department managed to terminate the government contract at Bamardom on November 10, 2016 with the wording “due to violation of deadlines for the completion of work, violation of the terms of the contract on the provision of a bank guarantee by the general contractor.”

The failure in Zelenograd caused fierce criticism from the coaching staff of Sports School No. 112 “Sputnik”, for which the site was intended. Experts believe that Bamard actually destabilized the work of the specialized Olympic reserve school, which is part of the Moscow Football Federation. By the way, the goalkeeper of CSKA and the USSR national team once emerged from its walls Mikhail Eremin.

“Where do you think high-level players will come from if such unscrupulous companies actually disrupt all plans? We receive directives: children must play on high-quality lawns, but where can we get them? Consider it a waste of two years. Colleagues went to Holland for an internship. There, such fields are laid in a few months, and as a result, coaches can focus on their direct responsibilities, and not on the questions of when the construction will be completed and whether it will be completed at all,” one of the representatives of the capital’s coaching workshop told the publication.

Meanwhile, Sinara-Development (the general contractor for the reconstruction of the Central Stadium, part of the Sinara group of Dmitry Pumpyansky) continues to insist on the high qualifications of the subcontractor. “At the stadium in Yekaterinburg, a traditional field with natural grass has been designed, which will be built using proven, time-tested technologies. The contract for the construction of the field at the Ekaterinburg Arena was concluded with the Bamard company, which won the tender based on many selection parameters, including experience and quality of work. It is also worth noting that Sinara-Development already has experience of cooperation with the Bamard company, which was involved in the construction of a football field with natural grass during the first reconstruction of the Central Stadium in 2011,” the group’s press service told Pravda UrFO "Sinara".

However, fans who regularly attend Ural matches recall that the arena field, laid after the first reconstruction, regularly became the subject of criticism, especially at the beginning and end of the season. At the same time, the management and agronomists of FC Ural had to make, without exaggeration, titanic efforts to ensure that RFU inspectors did not move matches to other cities.

“I don’t know all the ins and outs, but based on the state the field regularly found itself in in the spring and autumn, the conclusion arises that its creators simply did not take into account the peculiarities of our climate and did not follow the technology. The players were muddling through the mud; beautiful combination football was out of the question. Fans will come to the game in any case, but the majority of fans, and that’s thousands of people, will think about whether it’s worth watching this “swamp football,” one of the representatives of the Ural fan movement told the publication.

Central stadium in Yekaterinburg after the first reconstruction of "Bamard"

Let us remind you that previously the head coach of Zenit Mircea Lucescu harshly criticized the work of the Bamard company to create an exclusive roll-out pitch for the Zenit Arena. According to him, it is impossible to even train football players at the stadium due to the unsatisfactory quality of the surface. Chairman of the Board of Gazprom (co-investor in the construction of a facility in St. Petersburg) Alexey Miller also spoke negatively about the work of “Bamard” at the stadium on Krestovsky Island. According to the chief agronomist of the club Konstantin Krimersky, for 9 months aeration was not carried out even once, in addition, the contractor practically did not prepare the field for winter, without treating the plants with protective agents. As a result, the lawn turned out to be ruined in the spring.

In April, the club, which was vying for a place in the Champions League at the end of the season, pompously moved to a new arena from the old Petrovsky Stadium, but after playing only 2 matches there, it decided to return. Defeat from Terek, not least because of the “monstrous” condition of the field, according to experts, risks putting an end to the league championship ambitions and, accordingly, multimillion-dollar dividends of the richest club in Russia, which, as expected, caused undisguised irritation of its bosses.

According to Yekaterinburg sports commentator Danil Palivoda, who was present at the first match at the Zenit Arena (), the condition of the lawn left much to be desired. “The ball bounced uncontrollably across the field. Zenit usually plays low and keeps the ball on the lawn. This time their combination game did not work out. In these conditions, “Ural” was more accustomed; in the spring in Yekaterinburg they have to play on such a field. But this is after winter, and in the case of St. Petersburg, this is the first game at the stadium, a completely new lawn,” an eyewitness criticized the work of “Bamard”.

Another sports observer who followed the game confirms the judgment. “Due to the state of the field, Zenit could not develop attacks. Visually, the players’ feet were literally buried in the grass, and large pieces of turf were constantly flying out from under their boots,” the publication’s interlocutor emphasized.

Representatives of the 2018 FIFA World Cup organizing committee have already paid close attention to the problems of the St. Petersburg arena. The organizers have their own opinion about the Bamard company. “What was proposed to be done by Bamarda is a completely new technology for Russia. Today, if a scapegoat is appointed, the responsibility will be placed on the contractor. If there are real proceedings, then there will probably be a lot of claims against the administration of St. Petersburg, which acted as the customer for the work and changed the general contractor several times with great resonance,” a source close to the organizers of the 2018 FIFA World Cup games told Pravda UrFO. of the year.

The chief engineer of the Bamard company, which was responsible for the turf at the stadium on Krestovsky, explained why the field had to be replaced at the new stadium, costing more than $1 billion.

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The field was in this state in October 2016.

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This is what the Krestovsky stadium looked like on May 27, 2017; three days later the work on laying the rolled turf was completed.

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The act of transfer and acceptance of the grass lawn at the football stadium under construction in the Western part of Krestovsky Island in St. Petersburg.