Inside a grass scientist’s 6-year quest to grow World Cup stadium turf

By Katie Hunt, Jeremy Harlan, CNN

(CNN) — When the World Cup starts next week, no one will be watching the pitch more closely than John Trey Rogers. The players will have their eyes on the ball; the referees will be studying the gameplay. Rogers will be focused on the grass beneath their feet.

Rogers, professor of turfgrass research at Michigan State University, is the grass guru responsible for the quality and durability of the World Cup pitches at the tournament’s 16 venues in North America.

“I’m more of a grass guy than a soccer guy,” he said.

The World Cup, which begins June 11, will see 48 teams playing 104 matches across the United States, Mexico and Canada over the course of six weeks, with conditions spanning from southern heat and humidity to temperate, northern climates.

The turf may not be top of mind for many fans, but it’s a critical component of the high-stakes tournament, as it affects the physics of the ball and players’ movements, and the likelihood of injury.

While eight of the host stadiums are normally outfitted with artificial turf, and the rest sport natural turfgrass, all the stadiums must have their fields replaced with the grass most perfect for the game. This process is complicated by the fact that five have domes that dramatically reduce the amount of life-giving sunlight.

The job of making sure the revamped grass pitches uniformly meet exacting, professional-grade standards across all these stadiums has fallen to Rogers, his former student John Sorochan, who is now a distinguished professor of turfgrass science and management at the University of Tennessee, and their colleagues. It’s a task that has taken six years of preparation, with the research beginning in late 2020.

“FIFA wants the top games to be played on natural turf,” Rogers said, “because the world’s best players will have the most control and most comfort on a natural turf surface, which they’ve been playing on their whole life.”

It’s a daunting endeavor. “Eight of the 16 stadiums don’t have grass in them ever,” he noted, “and five of those once you put the grass in sunshine is not going to help you at all.”

Most US stadiums are built for the National Football League, with fields that are about 75% to 80% the size of a regular soccer pitch. In the Kansas City, Missouri, stadium, for example, 10 rows of seats had to be removed to enlarge the field surface.

“Most of the world is soccer crazy. In other words, every stadium you ever go to it’s a soccer stadium,” he said. “The exception to that is the United States of America.”

The stadiums with artificial turf, such as those in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Los Angeles, had to have the field covered or stripped out before the grass turf could be installed.

Using three species of grass, Rogers and his collaborators have devised the best type — or combination — for each location, using specialist equipment that mimics the wear and tear of cleated shoes and measures the height of the ball’s bounce.

For cooler climates, such as those in Toronto, Philadelphia and Mexico City (which despite its southern location sits at a high altitude) the turf is a mix of Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass. For stadiums in warmer climates, such as those in Miami and Guadalajara and Monterrey, Mexico, Rogers and his colleagues decided on Bermuda grass.

Domed venues further complicated the equation, he noted. Stadiums in the sweltering climates of Houston, Dallas and Atlanta would ostensibly require a warm-season species such as Bermuda grass, but because the grass will be indoors with less sunshine and under air-conditioning, a cool-season grass blend is better suited.

To make sure the grass in indoor stadiums stays alive for six weeks, irrigation systems and banks of artificial grow lights are deployed.
“They look like big birds that get wheeled out and put on the turf,” Rogers said. “We have to have a specific recipe for how many hours of light per day on the plant to have, and we’re crossing some new ground in a lot of this.”

“We’ve not had World Cup games in multiple domed stadiums over multiple-day periods before,” he said.

Grass is grown in Colorado

Sod farmer Joe Wilkins III, general manager and owner of Green Valley Turf Co. in Platteville, Colorado, has grown and nurtured the grass for the Atlanta, Houston and Dallas stadiums, with monthly visits from Rogers, Sorochan and their team.

“It seems a little strange that the grass is coming all the way from Colorado, but those buildings will be climate-controlled at 70 degrees throughout the whole tournament,” he said, “so they needed a cool-season grass which thrives in our environment that’s near impossible to grow closer to where the venues are.”

Wilkins began growing the sod a year ago on a layer of plastic, which is covered by gravel and 10 to 12 inches of sand. The technique ensures that the sod grows quickly and can be easily cut, rolled and transported. Each pitch is 82,000 square feet, or nearly 2 acres, but Wilkins said he has grown about 9 acres “just to have some extra so whatever we send is about as perfect as it can be.”

CNN witnessed the sod for Houston’s pitch being cut and harvested in Colorado’s cool nighttime temperatures on May 25. After the sod was rolled up like a carpet, it was loaded onto 24 refrigerated trucks before making the 1,000-mile journey to Houston, where seven matches will be played.

Once in the stadium, Wilkins said plastic fibers were sewn through the grass and into the sand layer to strengthen and stabilize the turf and help it retain its green color throughout the tournament.

“It’s the biggest sporting event in the world,” Wilkins said. “So, to be a part of that and to have three fields, it’s a great feeling.”

‘I will watch the grass first’

Rogers and his team are hoping to avoid the complaints about the quality of the grass pitches that were made at the 2024 Copa América tournament and Euro 2024.

He’s an experienced hand. At the 1994 World Cup, the first time the soccer tournament was held in the United States, Rogers made possible what was then a unique sporting feat: playing a World Cup soccer match on an indoor natural grass surface inside a domed stadium.

He was responsible for installing real grass in the now demolished Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan for the 1994 men’s World Cup. To lay the groundwork, he and his colleagues constructed a 6,600-square-foot model of the Pontiac Silverdome and pioneered the sod on modular, plastic growing systems that have been widely deployed at this year’s tournament.

Rogers said he is confident his team has done the work necessary to perfect the pitches — although he knows that, with the advent of high-definition TV, the expectations for the performance and aesthetics of the pitches are far higher than they were more than 30 years ago.

Back then, he hadn’t heard of the World Cup, and he’s still not exactly a devotee of the game. “I love to watch the fans, and I’ll cheer just like everyone else,” he said. “But I will watch the grass first. I will promise you that.”

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