Club World Cup offers trial run for 2026 World Cup stadiums to perfect pitches, avoid Copa America problems

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Hours before the host cities of the 2026 World Cup venues began their official one-year countdown to the tournament, the celebrations took on a different look at MetLife Stadium, the site of next year's final. On a sunny morning, tractors rode across the ends of the pitch, and the grounds crew were on the grass, laying down and inspecting the final pieces of the natural surface that will call the stadium home for the next five weeks during the Club World Cup.

The Club World Cup, which begins Saturday and will head to MetLife Stadium on Sunday for the first of nine matches at the venue, is a trial run for many who hope to get a feel for the experience when the main event comes to the U.S., Mexico and Canada next summer. For no one is that more true than the people tasked with ensuring the playing surfaces are as pristine as possible for the 2026 World Cup, for whom the work begins a year in advance. The first task – ensuring the pitches from stadium to stadium are as similar as possible, no matter the climate or each venue's specifications.

"After the specifications for the tournament are clarified, each venue will go away and work out the best way to deliver those," Blair Christiansen, the venue pitch manager at MetLife Stadium for the Club World Cup, said. "Depending on geographically where they are, they'll have a process using experts to develop that and they'll integrate that into their venue management and ensure that the people maintaining the field over the next month have an understanding of what it's gonna take."

In the case of MetLife Stadium and six other 2026 World Cup venues, those specifications include accounting for the mechanics of placing a grass surface in a stadium that's usually home to artificial turf.

"The profile's a unique profile so while it is, traditionally, a synthetic field for the NFL code throughout the year, we have built a drainage layer below the surface here so we've lifted the turf up about six inches higher than it is played on throughout the year and it forms part of a two-inch stabilized sod with a 85-millimeter drainage cell with a geotextile layer beneath the cell and it seems to be what we believe will be an outstanding surface for the tournament," Christiansen noted.

The year-long process includes listening to feedback from players, and though MetLife Stadium is primarily an NFL venue that is home to the New York Giants and New York Jets, Christiansen and company had a lot of commentary to consider. The venue hosted three Copa America matches last year, a tournament in which the grass were routinely criticized – the field at MetLife Stadium had brown patches, while the pitch at Atlanta's Mercedes Benz Stadium was described as hollow by Canada's Kamal Miller and a "disaster" by Argentina's Emiliano Martínez. Though those surfaces were put in place by CONMEBOL, FIFA still took those notes into consideration.

"We're not sitting on a concrete pad anymore, we've lifted it and we've got a drainage cell a void below, so I'd expect that not to be as firm – that was some of the comments, and we've introduced the stabilized fiber technology into it and so they'll give it a bit more resilience as well," Christiansen said.

The grass at MetLife Stadium was grown at Tuckahoe Turf Farms in Hammonton, New Jersey, nearly 100 miles south of the venue, and installation officially began on Monday, when 23 truckloads delivered around 8,500 square meters of freshly grown grass. Though it was a picturesque morning when the last piece of grass was installed, MetLife Stadium's new turf had to brave the elements during the process, which included a downpour of more than half an inch of rain in a two-hour period on Tuesday.

"That was a brilliant test for the turf itself, and so the turf is actually sand, drains outstandingly well," Christiansen said. "Yesterday, while everyone else was taking cover, I was out with an umbrella just walking the turf, trying to understand exactly how it took that rain, where the water went, how quickly it dried, what was the surface firmness, how did it feel underfoot, all those types of things. … This turf stood up, no problems."

The huge quantity of grass, though, does not include the edges of the actual surface. There will be a very visible ring of artificial turf around the natural grass at many of the Club World Cup venues, mainly to make the lives of the groundskeepers easier.

"Over time, we've worked out that having a synthetic ring road around the natural turf surface is the best for the tournament," Christiansen said. "There's a lot of ancillary work that happens outside the field and if we can keep more people off the grass than on the grass, that's great and it gives us some access as well without having to try and maintain turf in some pretty challenging environments with some pretty pressing needs so always the way and many stadiums around the world do it now, a sort of evolution of knowledge."

FIFA's grass experts will repeat the process almost exactly over the next 12 months for the World Cup, though not without keeping an eye on the Club World Cup this summer.

"I think every game has learnings, there's no doubt about that and while I sound very confident, … I'm always anxious as well," Christiansen said. "You just want to say that it's going to do exactly what I've said it's going to do and then I think throughout the tournament, there'll just be some slight tweaks throughout the maintenance and preparation processes and that's natural."