Didier Deschamps played on the MetLife Stadium pitch and came away wondering if there was cement underneath. "You have very short shards of grass here," the France manager said after a 3-1 win over Senegal. His midfielder Adrien Rabiot was blunter: "hard and rigid." These aren't minor gripes — this is the surface that will host the World Cup final.
The pitch is 'Tehoma 31 Bermuda grass,' trucked in via 600 rolls grown on a North Carolina turf farm. It sits on 18 to 24 inches of sand, with a drainage air-gap below and a vacuum ventilation system supposedly regulating temperature and protecting the roots. FIFA insist everything is fine — "every pitch is healthy and performing as intended for elite competition" — but that statement lands a little differently when Vinicius Junior is publicly complaining that the grass "dried out" and disrupted Brazil's attacks.
Why this matters for England
Thomas Tuchel's side are expected to dominate possession against Panama's deep defensive block. England's approach — patient build-up, passing sequences, probing wide — demands a reliable surface. A patchy, worn pitch that plays firm and uneven doesn't just create injury risk; it actively disrupts the kind of football Tuchel wants to play. England's odds of a comfortable, controlled performance look shakier when the pitch itself becomes a variable.
Then there's everything outside the stadium. No roof means sections of seating bake in direct sunlight during afternoon kick-offs — a genuine health concern when New Jersey summers push into the high 30s. A return train from Manhattan's Penn Station on match days costs around £73 ($98), compared to £9.50 on a normal day. And the roads around East Rutherford? Grid-locked for hours before kick-off.
"Nowhere near the best stadium the US has to offer"
Dane Johnson, a New York Jets season ticket holder from Englewood, put it plainly: "I'm not really a soccer fan but honestly, this is nowhere near the best stadium the US has to offer. It's big but that's about it." Around 1,740 lower-bowl seats were removed just to meet FIFA's minimum field dimensions — and even then the surface has drawn criticism throughout the tournament.
The NFL's relationship with this pitch has also been troubled. Fourteen ACL injuries in six years on the artificial turf that preceded the World Cup grass installation. The new surface was already criticised during last summer's Club World Cup, with only minor improvements made before the World Cup began. FIFA say it's fine. The players who've played on it disagree.
