Behind the scenes: Getting pitch perfect for the Europa League and Europa Conference League

Better playing surfaces continue to drive the improvement of football at the highest levels in Europe, and as this piece presented by Engelbert Strauss confirms, groundskeepers have benefited from huge developments.

"Innovation is increasingly important in the field of pitch quality," says Lee Guerriero, a pitch and technology specialist who works within UEFA's Football Operations Unit. "Hybrid pitches or reinforced pitches and most technologies have had a huge impact on player quality."

Those modern surfaces – which feature a combination of artificial and natural grass – help to reduce wear and tear over the course of a season. As Guerriero explains: "When you see pitches on TV these days at elite level football, it's very rare that you see goalmouths with a massive loss of grass cover [...] like you used to see in the 90s perhaps, so that technology has already improved playing conditions significantly.

"The equipment that the groundskeepers use: the mowers, the lighting rigs, the artificial light that we can provide to a pitch to help with growing conditions, the types of fertilisers, products and seeds, it's all improved a great deal and that helps the groundskeepers to deliver higher quality pitches."

"Requirements and expectations have increased dramatically in football," acknowledges freelance agronomist Stefano Meli, whose remit with the local authorities in Florence includes the pitch at Fiorentina's Artemio Franchi Stadium. Technology has made some parts of his job easier, but there is still plenty of hands-on work to be done to ensure pitches are at their best.

As he showed UEFA's camera team around the works his team did on the day after a Fiorentina game, he explained: "The first job was done by hand: doing the topping and fixing the pitch, then we used the machines to remove the dry, damaged grass. Next we used bio-stimulant treatments in order to restore the plants, to make them take root and have stronger vegetation."

After a quick cut of the grass, the pitch furniture is brought back – new lines are drawn, flags replaced – and Meli's pitches are ready to use again, and Guerriero's job is to ensure that every pitch used for games in UEFA's competitions is maintained to a similar high standard.

He says: "The aesthetics of the pitch are important for us, how the pitch looks to the spectators and on television because clearly it represents the club, it represents UEFA, the city and the brand of the competition."

However, if modern technology is helping to raise standards, Guerriero acknowledges that very modern issues are giving groundskeepers new headaches too.

"Climate change is a big issue for us," he says. "We've had extremely hot summers and cold winters and that really has an impact on how the groundskeepers work. We have to try and support them through these difficult processes as much as we can."