If MetLife Stadium's grass could talk, it might say it's finally woken up just in time. FIFA is standing by the much-criticized temporary pitch in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where Spain and Argentina will play Sunday's World Cup final, insisting the surface is now in "excellent" shape after a rocky start. Early in the tournament, Brazil's Vinicius Junior blamed the dry, sluggish field for disrupting play, while France's Adrien Rabiot said he wasn't sure it even qualified as a real pitch, reports the Athletic. Alan Ferguson, FIFA's senior pitch manager, says the problem stemmed from a calculated gamble: installing warm-weather Bermuda grass—which Successful Farming notes was developed by Oklahoma State University and is being used in three stadiums hosting the World Cup—so it would hold up through the final, only to have New Jersey temperatures stay cooler than expected at first.
Ferguson says the turf has since responded to rising temperatures and intensive care—grow covers, lights, new irrigation, and subsurface systems—and now consistently ranks among the top four of the 16 World Cup venues in FIFA's testing. A built-in two-week break since a July 5 round-of-16 match gave the surface extra recovery time. The grass will be cut one last time on Sunday morning; after the final, it will be ripped out so the NFL's artificial turf can return. FIFA will then sell off pieces of "a genuine piece of football history" for $450 a pop, notes the AP. That's for a 17.5cm by 17.5cm by 17.5cm piece of grass, for the record.
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