LOS ANGELES STADIUM — From the concourse level, the lush green carpet of grass beneath looked immaculate. On whatever screen you watched these first few days of matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the fields appeared equally pristine.
Looks can deceive, obviously. The truth would be revealed either way shortly after the tournament co-host U.S. national team kicked off Group D by beating Paraguay on Friday, when I pulled veteran USA defender Antonee “Jedi” Robinson aside, asked him how the surface had played, and waited for his verdict.
(Photo by Karl Anderson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“We were just talking about this [in the locker room],” Jedi said. “It’s probably the best field I’ve ever played on in the States.”
In the eight years since FIFA awarded the 2026 edition of soccer’s quadrennial showpiece to the U.S., Canada and Mexico, what the quality of the pitches might be like has been an unavoidable part of the conversation. Because half of the 16 venues across the three host countries don’t normally house natural grass fields, the global game’s governing body would have to install temporary ones before the 39-day event.
Concern that they wouldn’t be of the appropriate standard for the biggest event in sports was understandable. Over the last two summers, players participating in Concacaf’s Gold Cup, CONMEBOL’s Copa América and FIFA’s own Club World Cup — considered a dry run for the main event this June and July — blasted the shoddy turf under their feet with alarming frequency.
“Usually, it’s shocking,” Jedi confirmed of those hastily installed versions, which are often laid atop the synthetic gridiron used by NFL teams only days before some of the planet’s most famous athletes compete on them.
Players hate it. Fans, too. Why wouldn’t they? Shoddy fields make for bad soccer.
“When you can’t tell how the surface is going to react and how the ball will bounce, if it’s sticky, you can’t really play your best football,” Robinson added. “Tonight we could.”
(Getty Images)
To meet them, FIFA enlisted turf experts — yes, those exist —from Michigan State University and the University of Tennessee — the two leading institutions in the field. (Pun intended.)
“We’ve done over 200 projects between the two universities,” said Dr. John Sorokin, a faculty member at Tennessee who, as a student at MSU in 1994, was involved in that year’s installation at the Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit, host of the first indoor World Cup game ever when the U.S. first hosted the event 32 years ago.
Advancements in grow-light technology and the universal adoption of “hybrid” fields — natural grass reinforced with synthetic fibers — made it realistic to “provide a consistent, playable surface for every match, where the ball is going to interact with the surface the players running and cutting are going to feel same under their foot,” said Sorokin, who led the undertaking with MSU’s Dr. Trey Rogers, his mentor three decades earlier.
There was no one-size-fits-all solution. At the indoor Atlanta Stadium, where the FieldTurf used by the NFL’s Falcons was already scheduled to be replaced before the 2026 season, grounds crews laid natural grass in the winter, ahead Atlanta United’s MLS campaign. FIFA then replaced that pitch with its own in May, using lessons the local groundskeepers learned over the previous months.
(Photo by DIRK WAEM / BELGA MAG / Belga / AFP via Getty Images)
