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Pittodrie Stadium, home to Scotland's Aberdeen Football Club, sits on the edge of the North Sea. During the winter — the middle of the Scottish Premier League season — a bitter wind whips up off the water, giving a biting edge to the snow and rain that often accompany Aberdeen's matches. The climate's tough on away fans, but it's even harder on the boggy pitch: last season, Aberdeen spent about €45,000 to maintain its field — a big sum for a declining club in a peripheral league.

Little wonder, then, that when UEFA, European football's governing body, said last year that it was looking for volunteer clubs to test artificial football surfaces, Aberdeen leaped at the chance. The club not only stands to get a €204,000 subsidy from UEFA for the new surface if its application is accepted, but it will also be part of a wider trend sweeping the sports world — one that uses new technology to create faux fields that are player-friendly, and can take a beating.

For more than two decades, AstroTurf dominated the synthetic-field market. Many athletes, particularly American football players, disliked the stuff. The fields were laid over concrete and had a texture like sandpaper. Players blamed the carpet for causing knee and toe injuries because the surface had no "give," although studies on injury rates were inconclusive.

But in 1999 FieldTurf, based in Montreal, began mass-producing a new surface whose composition better imitates the real thing, with more resistance to wear and tear. The longer, grasslike fibers, made of a polyethylene blend, give it a more natural look and feel, while the blend of sand and rubber particles — recycled from old running shoes — that form its base are loosely packed around the blades of "grass," providing a softer cushion than real dirt.

The new surfaces are growing fast in the U.S., where demand on municipal fields is almost unceasing. American football teams are also enthusiastic. Four NFL stadiums — in Dallas, Detroit, Philadelphia and Seattle — use synthetic turf, and several others, including Giants Stadium, outside New York City and home to two NFL teams, are considering it. Almost 200 synthetic fields will be laid in the U.S. this year, compared with fewer than 50 in 1999. And more than 20 U.S. companies are selling the new surface, under brand names such as AstroPlay and NeXturf. European companies such as Germany's Tarkett Sommer have also joined the turf wars.

More critically FIFA, global football's governing body, could create a worldwide industry for these companies. FIFA has approved 30 facilities with synthetic turf, including the training pitch at Clairefontaine, France's famed football academy, and Luzhniki Olympic Stadium in Moscow, home to the Spartak and Torpedo Moscow clubs. Should FIFA approve the surface for all competitions, annual industry sales, now about j300 million, could explode.

The European market seems ripe as cash-strapped clubs look for cost-effective ways to keep their pitches playable through the European winter. In the '80s, some clubs tried plastic pitches, but abandoned the idea because of the rock-hard surface and the sky-high bounce of the ball. However, things could turn again. Early this month, English Premiership clubs Chelsea and Charlton Athletic played a match on a pitch that was so heavily sanded that commentators referred to the game as "beach football." The incident fueled speculation that in England at least, faux pitches would become commonplace. For its part, the English Football Association Premier League — which currently forbids artificial surfaces — is waiting on research that rules out any link between the new pitches and player injuries.

Despite initial installation costing upwards of €375,000 for a synthetic field, compared with €140,000 for grass, the increased usage and much-reduced maintenance costs can make the switch a bargain. In U.S. high schools, teams that have the new synthetic grass say it's safer than real grass, which can become dangerously uneven if it's overused. Steve Lowe, groundkeeper at Claremont High School in California, which switched to FieldTurf last year, says players have had fewer injuries on the synthetic field.

FieldTurf has become so popular that other companies, including Southwest, the producer of AstroTurf, have brought out similar products. Many of the new synthetic surfaces surround the grass blades with an all-rubber base, which, some companies say, makes a field even cushier than the sand-and-rubber mix of FieldTurf. For players used to the hard knocks of competition, the future could have a soft landing.

• PERRY BACON Jr. and JENNIE JAMES
• Is fake grass a greener option for football leagues?