Top football player Danny van Bakel is the brand ambassador of GreenFields in Vietnam

GreenFields, the innovative market leader in synthetic turf systems, has entered into a collaboration with Danny van Bakel, a football professional from Dutch origin, present member of Thanh Hóa FC – the professional football club in Vietnam, and has now become the brand ambassador of GreenFields in Vietnam. GreenFields aims to create awareness of its innovative and high quality synthetic turf football systems at the highest sports level in Vietnam. Being a brand ambassador, Danny van Bakel will contribute to realising GreenFields’ objective of increasing the quality benchmark of football fields in Vietnam.

Danny van Bakel kicked off his career in 2002 with the Dutch first division club Helmond Sport, for which he played three years in the Netherlands. From 2005 to 2010 he played for several other clubs in the Dutch and Belgium soccer league. In 2011, Danny signed a one and a half year contract with the Vietnamese club Binh Duong FC. He played two seasons for the club making 28 appearances before joining Dong Nai FC in 2013. The following year he was recruited by Thanh Hóa FC. Here he has become a fan favourite and is known as ‘the Dutch David Beckham’.

A perfect match: raising the benchmark

Danny van Bakel is known to be the best defender in the V-League and the fact that other players, journalists and football analysts lobby for him to be selected for the national team after having obtained his Vietnamese passport proves that he is also highly respected as football professional. “The fact that Danny is a professional player who continuously aims to improve his skills and also the quality of Vietnamese football in general, makes him the perfect partner of GreenFields”, says James Bach, Business Development Manager of GreenFields for South East Asia.

Future of synthetic turf in Vietnam

The V-League is a very intensive league and as a result most of the clubs have implemented extremely intensive training programmes. Training sessions will take a few hours and they typically take place on the main field. Since a natural football turf field cannot be sustained as a high quality football surface for more than 300 hours of play per year, these fields are subjected to overuse resulting in bald patches and an inconsistent surface. “I have played on several high quality synthetic turf fields in the Netherlands and looking back I now really appreciate the consistency and safety of these fields. Therefore I strongly believe that in the near future a large number of clubs in Vietnam will follow the same trend as in the Netherlands and replace their natural turf fields with high-grade synthetic turf. In my opinion all professional football players in Vietnam should have a chance to play on a field of GreenFields in order for them to realize how a good quality field can contribute to the success of the game. It’s not only important for stadiums, but also for training ground. The fields are perfect in all weather conditions allowing the fields to be used even more and the youth teams to improve faster”, says Danny van Bakel.

GreenFields develops, produces, supplies and installs innovative artificial grass systems. It does so in cooperation with and as a subsidiary of textile technology group TenCate.
GreenFields has distributors in more than 100 countries and is the leader in the market for artificial grass fields for various sports, including hockey and football, and is a pioneer when it comes to sustainable business practices.

TenCate Grass is a worldwide leader in the development, production and marketing of synthetic turf components and the designing of synthetic turf systems for top-flight sports, recreation and landscape applications. Together with its business partners TenCate Grass endeavours to operate an integrated system approach. This gives users certainty about its playing characteristics, service life and durability. TenCate Grass has production plants in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.