Stuff the artificial turf and give us grass. Play beautiful soccer on nature's verdant lot and poetry might break out. Soccer looks artificial when played on synthetic carpets. You can imagine a groundskeeper using a vacuum cleaner post-game.

Jerad Minnick, founder of the company Growing Innovations, is a champion for grass.

"With natural grass, we are able to achieve a soft yet firm surface that is safe and player friendly," he writes by e-mail. "There never are heat issues on grass (grass actually cools the ambient temperature instead of magnifying it), and skin burns and abrasions aren't common. Also with grass, we are able to produce a specific surface for a specific team's strengths and/or needs. Slow, fast, soft, firm, wet, dry ... we can control all of these factors completely with a grass field depending on what a coach might want for their team's strengths. From the playability standpoint, those are all positives."

That pitch sells. And there's more.

"The art of grounds keeping is no longer an art," he writes. "It is a science. And it's becoming an engineering marvel." Bio-mechanics labs are studying new grass field technologies that can absorb the energy generated by players' legs into the soil to reduce the injury potential of a player exponentially."

But wait - surely the fake grass is cheaper?

Jamie McDonald/Getty Images

"Well it's just not true. Grass is the cheaper option 90 percent of the time," according to Minnick. "Maintenance costs of grass over eight years (the life span of a synthetic carpet) equal the same as the replacement of the carpet. Now we have three pro-soccer stadiums in the USA committed to a three-year carpet replacement cycle for their synthetic turf. That money equals an amount that would be able to resurface a grass field five times in three years. With three carpet replacements in nine years, they could have resurfaced a grass field 15 times. And they still would have built the original field for 25-50 percent less!"

Take that to the bank.

Sadness: By season's end, soccer is a vale of tears for some, a cruel toll. A box of tissues for Liverpool's Luis Suarez, English soccer's player of the year, who was led from the field weeping Monday after his team blew a three-goal lead to Crystal Palace. Liverpool's hopes of a championship are now in peril. The TV picture shimmered with glassy eyed Liverpool fans, flush with disbelief.

More tears flood. Situated on the banks of the River Thames, Fulham FC has been relegated from the Premier League; its fans have a sinking feeling. Fear that the drop never stops.

Sadness can sweep aging players. Football is no country for old men. Retirement or transfer to lesser teams are the options. At Chelsea FC, known as the Blues, Frank Lampard, John Terry and Ashley Cole - call them that club's legends - got teary last weekend, waving to fans at the last home game of the season, seeing the end of the road.

Who turns on the waterworks for losers? No one held a bucket out for coach David Moyes, sacked by Manchester United this year, his lament private. There, anger substituted for sympathy - go away forever, screamed the fans. Some cry with joy at others' misfortune. One fan's tragedy is another's comedy. Add merciless to cruel.

Retro-Quakes: Jump in the time machine and flash back to May 11, 1974, the Earthquakes' inaugural home game against the Dallas Tornado. Then, the fashions were in full flare: the daft hair, odd shirts and furry sideburns. This Saturday, the Quakes play FC Dallas in celebration of the landmark game. The Quakes will be giving retro-shirts to the first 2,500 fans and honoring former player and general manager Johnny Moore, who will be inducted into the team's Hall of Fame.