The Mall of Asia Football Pitch is a welcome addition to our football landscape. But some limitations hold it back.
Last Tuesday, February 25, the Mall Of Asia Football Pitch was revealed to the public with much fanfare. An intra-squad scrimmage of the Philippine Women’s National Football Team was held, complete with fireworks and a drone show. Hordes of football fans packed the bleachers to take in all the action.
Here are my thoughts on this new facility, the good and not-so-great.
What is great
Pitch dimensions. The Mall of Asia Football Pitch is 105m long and 68m wide, according to both my informal walking measurements and Lester Lee of Spurway, the contractors of the artificial surface. This is awesome. 105m by 68m is the preferred size for international competition. The minimum is 100m by 64m, but this is best. Our players will get accustomed to playing at this size of field.
Having a roomy field can also mean more space for festivals, where multiple small fields are shoehorned into a big pitch.
Run-off areas. There are ample buffer areas around the field. About three meters along the sides and four meters past the byline on the back. This is an important safety measure that the pitch gets right. Players fighting for a loose ball have plenty of room outside the lines, so they will not fear running into a wall or advertising board.
However, there is a low ledge at the end of the buffer zone that seems unnecessary and could, in theory, do some harm if a player lands on it. Covering it with foam might help.
Some pitches, like the one in Carmona, don’t have adequate run-off areas, so it’s great that this item is properly checked in the Mall of Asia Football Pitch.
High-quality artificial turf. The surface Spurway installed is GreenFields Evolution 40mm turf. It is very nice underfoot. Not quite as cushy as the most tito-friendly new pitch, the Bridgetowne football field, which uses 50mm GreenFields turf, but more than adequate. Lee of Spurway says there is a shock pad underneath for even more cushioning.
GreenFields is a Dutch company that has made about a dozen pitches already in the Philippines. They are a FIFA Preferred supplier of football turf.
I noticed that there is a slight crown on the field, with it being highest in the middle and sloping towards all sides. This will facilitate water runoff when it rains.
Good lighting. The light towers on all four corners give very bright illumination, with some shadows on the players but not bad at all. I asked photographer Mark Cristino, who was shooting from the corner, how the lighting was and he said it was very good, especially in the middle of the park.
Brilliant location. This isn’t the first football pitch on top of a mall. The Vozdovac stadium in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, is on top of a shopping mall and can seat over 5,000 fans for matches of FK Vozdovac in the Serbian second tier.
Bringing this concept to the Philippines, where land is at a premium, is a fantastic idea that is hopefully copied by other mall developers.
Watching and playing football should be a fun activity with minimum hassle. The MOA pitch gives plenty of parking, a nice, clean environment, and the ability to walk downstairs for bottomless dining choices for post-round food and drink. All this makes the Mall of Asia Football Pitch an ideal spot for youth football festivals and recreational play.
It also represents a great training ground for the national teams, with hotels nearby like the Conrad Manila.
No running track. I have nothing against the sport of running but it is always great to see a football pitch where the fans are close to the action. That’s what we have in MOA. On the east stand, they are almost too close. But the aforementioned run-off creates a big enough buffer.
Proper toilets. Believe, this is important. The UP Diliman football pitch got this wrong, with one-person toilets at every side of their grandstand. At halftime of a football game, plenty of fans rush to the toilet, so there is usually a long line during UAAP games in UP. The Mall of Asia pitch has men’s and women’s lavatories at each corner of the pitch. They weren’t completely finished, but I was able to check them out.
There are five urinals in each of the men’s rooms as well as several stalls. Very good, as this keeps halftime lines at a minimum. Interestingly, the ladies’ room has one urinal. Transgender-friendly, maybe?
What could be better
Bleacher design. The Mall of Asia Football Pitch has seating for 1,800. Not enough for an international match, but more than enough for 95% of football events here in the Philippines.
There is a west bleacher and an east bleacher. Both are covered, with five rows of seats. Thankfully there are no pillars obstructing anyone’s view. Other facilities have made this basic error.
The bleachers are set on the ground, and you walk in front of the bleachers to get to your seat. This means the first two or even three rows have their view blocked when people are passing by in front. It would have been ideal to have the lowest row raised at least one meter above the ground. Not only does it mean less blocking by passers-by, but it affords a better angle of view of the action as well.
A permanent rail in front of a raised first row would also deter potential pitch invaders. As is, it’s very easy for an irate football parent, angry fan, or nutjob streaker to just run onto the pitch.
There is a possible fix. Put the existing bleachers on a raised platform. There seems to be some headroom, with the roof high enough to accommodate an extra meter. It won’t come cheap, though, and added steps would complicate matters.
There is also another baffling element about the bleachers at the Mall of Asia Football Pitch. The west bleachers have what seems like a full four meters of room between it and where the turf begins. The east side, however, has almost no room. When people exit, they are literally tripping over the feet of those sitting in the front row, as you can see from this picture. This could have all been solved by scooting over the field westward by just one meter.
On the west bleachers, there are two covered dugouts for the teams. They look like afterthoughts because they are placed in front of the most central seats, rendering them useless. What’s worse is that having them there partially blocks the view of some seats beside them.
This should be a pretty easy fix. Rip out those central seats and lodge the dugouts in their place, thereby freeing up the view for the neighboring seats. But then the roof of the dugout becomes superfluous because there already is a roof there for the bleachers.
Another problem with the dugouts: they only have twelve seats. You need more to accommodate the substitutes and the entire coaching staff.
Locker rooms. I did not get to visit the locker rooms but I was told there were four of them. This is good because that will allow for multiple matches in one day. However, I was also told that there are only 16 cubby holes in each locker. A team can dress up to 23 players for a game, so that is the number of cubbies they should have gone for.
There is also a doping control room, which is great, but there needs to be other rooms for referees, media, and secretariat as well.
Ambulance access. For safety reasons, there has to be a medical staff and an ambulance on standby during football events. You are actually supposed to have two ambulances. If there is only one, then there should at least be a designated vehicle that can be used as an emergency patient transport vehicle. This is needed in the unlikely event that the first ambulance is bringing one player to the hospital and another player suffers a major health crisis and also needs to be shipped.
Thankfully, there is a wide walkway from the rooftop of MOA to the fifth-floor parking area of the North parking building. It should only take a few minutes for an injured player to be whisked there via a gurney to a waiting ambulance. However, it remains a question if that ambulance can quickly go down to the ground floor through the spiral exit.
This is a big advantage of having a pitch on the ground. Life-threatening injuries are rare in football, but they do happen, and quick access to a hospital is important.
Broadcast infrastructure. There is no obvious spot for the main camera position of a broadcast. The camera must be on a high vantage point, and I didn’t see any. There is the locker building behind the west stand, but I was told there is a steel roof on top of that. I really don’t know if it is possible for a platform to be made there. Another fix would be to redo the central entrance to the east stand by tearing up the fabric cover of the roof and creating a platform for the camera and commentary position.
This would be crucial for high-level matches that would be broadcast or streamed. You also need to think of where an Outside Broadcast (OB) van would go and how the cabling would run. I am not sure if there is space for an OB van near the pitch but there has to be. OB vans have satellite dishes, so I don’t know if they can be parked in non-open-air parking. SM has developed the entire area beside the field and I am not sure if this has been taken into consideration.
Is the walkway to the parking area strong enough for a big heavy OB van? That’s another good question.
Wind. This is one disadvantage of a seaside pitch that has no high stand to block off wind from Manila Bay. While I was standing in the center of the pitch the wind was very strong and would most certainly affect play on the pitch. But it didn’t seem to be a big factor in the game, a 1-1 draw between the blue and white squads of the national team.
The verdict
The Mall of Asia Football Pitch is a great pitch. The field itself is excellent and is fine for youth and senior festivals, recreational open play, and training for elite teams. But the facility needs some work to be a good stadium.
There is a need for quality venues for elite play in Metro Manila. This has been evident while Rizal Memorial is getting a new pitch. The men’s national team has to go to Clark for its next game next month, an Asian Cup qualifier against Maldives. In this regard, the MOA pitch is a bit of a missed opportunity.
Getting to the 5,000 capacity that would have made it possible for an AFC Champions League or international team match might have cost a lot, I admit. And in fact, it might even be structurally impossible since this is on top of a roof deck.
But a lot of little issues could have been caught early in the planning stage that could have made this a better venue for UAAP and PFL, stuff like the locker rooms, broadcast position, and seating. Some of these issues can still be remedied. Others will be more difficult to sort out.
I hope that entities who build stadiums would really get consultants who play football, watch football, and truly understand football stadium design. Or at the very least, have the architect read this, FIFA’s free online guide on football stadiums. It’s incredibly detailed, covering every single aspect of a football stadium one could imagine.
But make no mistake, as a football player and fan, I am very glad to have the Mall of Asia Football Pitch and can’t wait to kick around on it.
National teams head Freddy Gonzalez said it best when he spoke to my colleague Annika Cañiza:
“It’s a big game changer for football in general just because of where it’s located. And the fact that a company like SM would do something like this just shows that other companies now have to step up to raise the level, to see how they can beat this.”
Images taken by Bob Guerrero for The GAME.