FIFA wants perfect pitch at World Cup ’26 after Copa debacle

The 2026 World Cup is coming to North America with an ambitious plan: expanding the field by 50% and spreading the football spectacle across 16 cities in three countries with varying climates and altitudes.

FIFA wanted to create the perfect pitch for every location, so it worked with turf experts from the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University to research and develop the best surfaces for the tournament.

With the World Cup less than two years away and 48 teams playing 104 games in the US, Mexico and Canada, no one wants the pitch – or the field, as soccer fans call it – to become a talking point as it was at another major tournament earlier this summer.

The Copa América, organised every four years by the South American football confederation CONMEBOL, has suffered from problems with unstable ground.

Argentina and Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano “Dibu” Martínez called the grass field that replaced the artificial turf a “disaster” after they defeated Canada in the season opener on June 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Criticism continued to come from other teams and coaches early in the tournament.

“FIFA has high expectations and demands that we don’t have any failures,” John Sorochan, a professor of turfgrass science and management at Tennessee, said recently in a telephone interview. “That’s why they support so much research and preparation, so they don’t have to do what happened at the Copa, and the embarrassment that CONMEBOL had.”

As with this year’s Copa America, some football stadiums, some of which have roofs, will host matches at the next World Cup.

Sorochan and his mentor and former Michigan State professor Trey Rogers faced a similar challenge three decades ago when the World Cup was first held in the United States in 1994, with matches played indoors at the Pontiac Silverdome on the outskirts of Detroit.

“One of the easiest decisions I’ve made so far around this tournament was the partnership between UT and MSU,” said Alan Ferguson, FIFA26’s Director of Infrastructure and Technical Services. “Both already had world-leading reputations, both already led by world-class turf professors. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel — it was already there.”

Climate change could be an added factor, especially with matches being held from Mexico to Canada, so turf experts are considering different types of surfaces to deal with this.

“No new grass varieties have been bred specifically to meet the challenges of the World Cup, but over the past 20 years turf breeding has led to new grass varieties that are more resistant to heat, drought, disease and wear,” Sorochan said earlier this week.

Tennessee created what it calls a shade house to mimic a covered stadium. Michigan State, meanwhile, has a 23,000-square-foot asphalt slab to develop the concept of laying grass grown on plastic instead of soil on stadium surfaces.

Rogers and his team test how the natural surface reacts to a bouncing ball and when the pimples make contact.

A few months ago, during the Copa América, Martínez said that the ball bounced off the pitch like a springboard.

According to Rogers, the idea is that in two years’ time no one will be talking about the playing field at the World Cup anymore.

“If no one mentions the field,” he said, “we know we’ve done our job.”