The science behind perfect grass on World Cup’s 16 fields

The World Cup’s first whistle will sound June 11 at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, kicking off a summer-long spectacle that will stretch across three countries and draw a global audience. sport-ipl.my

For the grass they’ll play on, it all started years earlier in North Carolina. Or Colorado. Or Canada. Or whichever sod farm had been assigned to grow a particular, essential piece of the tournament.

Unique challenges

Across North America, FIFA’s pitch experts have spent years trying to make 16 new fields in three countries feel like one playing surface - indoors and out, in heat and shade, at sea level and altitude, inside stadiums that were not always built with grass in mind.

Along the way, the playing surfaces that will serve as the stage of this summer’s tournament have made an unlikely journey: from research plots to sod farms, from refrigerated trucks to stadium floors, from a living crop to soccer’s biggest show.

The hardest question may not be answerable until it’s too late to do anything about: Can a living field thrive for weeks inside a domed stadium, under artificial light, on a temporary surface - then hold up when the best soccer players on the planet ask every bounce, roll and blade beneath them to behave properly?

For World Cup organizers and their team of grass experts, each venue presented unique challenges.

Several host venues normally use artificial turf, and eight stadiums required a temporary natural-grass field to be installed over, or in place of, an existing artificial surface. Five are domed or covered. Mexico City brings altitude. Vancouver, Seattle and Boston bring cooler, cloudier conditions. Miami and Monterrey bring heat. Houston brings … a rodeo to town, which presents its own surface challenges.

But for players, the ball should roll the same, a plant foot should hold the same and a pass should bounce the same.

The field prep began nearly five years ago when FIFA partnered with turfgrass experts at the University of Tennessee and Michigan State.

At the time, the researchers did not yet know the full map of the tournament or the exact shape of the challenge. As the venues came into focus, so did the scale of the assignment, which FIFA has only described as a multimillion-dollar undertaking.

John "Trey” Rogers, a Michigan State professor and a turfgrass expert, recalled wincing with the announcement of each new venue.

"‘There’s three dome stadiums. No, there are four. No, there’s even more,’” he said.

The question was not simply what grass would look best to millions of viewers across the globe. It was what surface could be grown, transported, installed and maintained across North America - then asked to perform under World Cup pressure.

"It was hard to comprehend how big it was,” said John Sorochan, a turfgrass scientist at Tennessee.

The project reunited two turfgrass scientists whose careers have overlapped for decades.

Rogers helped develop the temporary natural-grass field used inside the Pontiac Silverdome during the 1994 World Cup. Sorochan was his student then.

Until then, a World Cup match hadn’t been contested indoors on natural grass before. "The holy grail has always been: Could you do something inside?”

Rogers said. They pulled it off, helping prove that natural grass could be brought indoors and survive for several World Cup matches.

Understanding root behaviour

The science has evolved since then. The indoor covered stadiums have grow lights, ventilation systems, carefully designed rootzones.

"There’s a lot more tools in the toolbox,” Sorochan said.

For this World Cup, Sorochan said researchers looked at the stadiums individually, then grouped them by the challenges they presented: domes, outdoor synthetic-turf conversions, existing grass venues and the altitude of Mexico City.

Every additional grass species would make consistency harder. So the World Cup surfaces were narrowed to two main systems: Bermuda grass for warmer climates and a mix of Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass for cooler ones.

"When you add another grass,” Sorochan said, "that just adds another variable.”

Together, the stadium fields comprise a total 88 square miles of natural sod.

The fields were grown on plastic.

For a conventional field, roots grow down into soil and are cut when the sod is harvested and moved to a stadium. But the variety of existing surfaces in World Cup stadiums demands a different approach.

Growing on plastic changes the root behavior. The roots grow down, hit the plastic barrier and turn sideways, forming a dense mat.

That allows the sod to be harvested with much of its root system intact. Once the sod is moved into the stadium and placed on sand, the roots begin growing downward again.

The World Cup fields started at one of nine sod farms: six in the United States, two in Canada and one in Mexico.

Some grass was seeded about a year before installation. Rogers said a Kentucky bluegrass/perennial ryegrass field grown on plastic can be ready in about nine to 11 months.

"We can now cut it like a pizza and roll it up,” Sorochan said.

A typical piece of sod is about 3½ feet wide and 30 to 45 feet long. The rolls are loaded into refrigerated trucks, much like produce headed to a grocery store.

"It just takes a lot more trucks,” Sorochan said.

The grass then goes on a long journey.

The pitch for the final traveled from Carolina Green Turf Farm in North Carolina to the Meadowlands in New Jersey. Grass from Colorado is now in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. In Mexico, sod grown north of Monterrey faced a roughly 10-hour ride to Guadalajara.

The timing matters because the cargo is alive. Too much heat, weight or time can stress the sod before it reaches the stadium.

When the sod arrives, crews are not just rolling out a green carpet.

At some venues, artificial turf came out and the field was built over concrete. At others, the existing surface was protected, covered and topped with layers: drainage, geotextile fabric, sand, irrigation and reinforced sod.

The benefit of sod grown on plastic is that it arrives mature and stable, not as a fragile new planting. Rogers said fans might be surprised how quickly a surface can be installed and used.

"You’d be surprised how many games you’ve watched in the National Football League got laid on a Thursday and the game on Saturday or Sunday,” he said.

He likens the installation process to a gourmet meal moving from ingredients to kitchen.

"Eventually, we’ll turn it over to the chefs,” he said, "and away we’ll go.”

To a turfgrass scientist, the magic lies beneath the surface.

Surface and playability

FIFA’s detailed specifications call for 100 percent natural grass, typically grown on a sand-based rootzone designed for drainage and stability. The grass is reinforced - either through stitched synthetic fibers or a hybrid backing - so it can handle elite-level cutting, sliding and sprinting.

In permanent systems, that can mean 12 inches of sand above a 6-inch gravel drainage layer. In temporary systems, the profile is shallower, often with 6 to 10 inches of sand and a plastic drainage module beneath. Some systems also include vacuum and ventilation components that pull excess moisture out and move air through the profile.

The grass is the visible part. The field is the system underneath.

In domed venues, field experts also have to replace the sun.

That means grow lights - sometimes a lot of them. Some stadiums can light the entire field at once. Others may have to light one section, move the equipment, then light another. In Dallas, a system of lights is suspended from the roof and lowered closer to the field.

The lights are not just to keep the grass green. They help the plant produce energy, recover from wear and hold up through weeks of World Cup traffic.

At Tennessee, Sorochan’s team used a soccer-ball launcher, high-speed cameras and video analysis to study how the ball behaves when it strikes the surface. In one test, he said, researchers fired balls into the grass at 55 kilometers per hour and a 17-degree angle, then measured whether the bounce stayed low enough for a player to control it - ideally, not rising above the knees.

A long pass should hit the surface and rise predictably. It should not jump over a player’s control in one city and skid differently in another.

The goal, Sorochan said, is simple: "We don’t want the surface to compromise the playability of the game.”

When the matches begin, most fans will watch the players.

Rogers will watch the ball roll.

In American football, he said, the ball hitting the ground usually means a play is dead. In soccer, the ground is part of every play. The pitch is in every pass, every touch, every cut, every slide. Across the tournament - on similar fields in 16 dissimilar stadiums - Rogers is hoping his fields perform so well that no one feels the need to mention it.

"Silence is golden for me,” Rogers said.

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عندما أسدل الستار على كأس العالم FIFA قطر 2022، لم يكن مشهد الأسطورة الأرجنتينية ليونيل ميسي وهو يرفع الكأس مرتديا البشت العربي الخليجي وحده الخالد في أذهان العالم، بل كانت التجربة الاستثنائية التي أعادت تعريف مفهوم تاريخ تنظيم المونديال برمته.
وقبل أيام من انطلاق النهائيات المونديالية الأضخم في التاريخ، التي تستضيفها الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية والمكسيك وكندا بمشاركة قياسية تبلغ 48 منتخبا، وللمرة الأولى في ثلاث دول، لا بد أن تبرز المقارنات في ظل التغيير الكبير الذي طرأ على ملامح البطولة.
وما قدمته دولة قطر قبل أربع سنوات كان نسخة مونديالية مختلفة، مكثفة، متقاربة، سهلة الحركة، ومرتبطة بهوية ثقافية واضحة، جعلت كثيرين يصفونها بأنها واحدة من أفضل نسخ كأس العالم في التاريخ الحديث، أما المونديال القادم فيبدو مختلفا تماما؛ أكثر اتساعا وتعقيدا، وبحجم قارة كاملة، وبصيغة مغايرة من جميع النواحي، سواء التنافسية أو الجماهيرية أو التنظيمية.
في قطر، كانت كرة القدم تعيش داخل مدينة واحدة تقريبا، بفضل المسافات القصيرة بين الملاعب، ما منح الجماهير فرصة نادرة لحضور أكثر من مباراة في يوم واحد، ولم يكن المشجع بحاجة إلى رحلات جوية أو تنقلات مرهقة من أجل متابعة فريقه، فكل شيء كان قريبا؛ الفنادق، والملاعب، ومناطق المشجعين، ووسائل النقل، وهو ما خلق أجواء جماهيرية متواصلة على مدار اليوم، وجعل البطولة تبدو وكأنها مهرجان كروي متصل لا يتوقف.
ولم يكن الأمر بتلك السهولة بطبيعة الحال، بل كان نتيجة جهود مضنية بذلتها مؤسسات الدولة كافة على مدار 12 عاما، كي يخرج الحدث بذلك المستوى من التحضر والرقي، عبر بنى تحتية من طراز فريد وملاعب أيقونية غير مسبوقة، حتى ذهل العالم بنتائج التجربة التي عاشتها الجماهير والمنتخبات بكل مستجداتها وخصوصا فيما يتعلق بميزة التقارب الجغرافي التي أصبحت حجر الزاوية في عقد أي مقارنة لاحقة.
أما في مونديال 2026، فستتغير الصورة بالكامل، حيث تقام البطولة في ثلاث دول و16 مدينة، تمتد من كندا شمالا إلى المكسيك جنوبا، ومن الساحل الشرقي للولايات المتحدة إلى الساحل الغربي، ما يعني أن الجماهير والمنتخبات ستواجه رحلات طويلة تمتد أحيانا لآلاف الكيلومترات بين مباراة وأخرى، وهنا سيظهر الاختلاف الجوهري بين نسخة مضغوطة ومركزة، وأخرى عملاقة بحجم قارة بأكملها.
ولا يتوقف الأمر عند الجغرافيا فقط، بل يمتد إلى شكل البطولة ومضمونها التنافسي، فمونديال 2022 كان آخر نسخة بالنظام التقليدي الذي ضم 32 منتخبا و64 مباراة، في حين أن مونديال 2026 سيقام بمشاركة 48 منتخبًا و104 مباريات، الأمر الذي حول المنافسة إلى حدث أكثر ضخامة.
صحيح أن التوسع منح فرصا أكبر لمنتخبات جديدة للمشاركة، لكنه في الوقت نفسه فرض تحديات كبيرة تتعلق بالإرهاق البدني، وكثافة المباريات، وصعوبة التنقل، سواء بالنسبة للاعبين أو الجماهير.
وتبقى أبرز الفوارق في خروج مونديال قطر عن التقاليد، من خلال إقامة البطولة خلال شهري نوفمبر وديسمبر، وهي خطوة كانت قبل انطلاق البطولة مثار جدل عالمي واسع، قبل أن تتحول لاحقا إلى واحدة من أبرز نقاط القوة التي ساهمت في خصوصية مونديال قطر وتفرده، فقد وصل اللاعبون إلى المنافسات وهم في منتصف الموسم، ما انعكس إيجابا على الجوانب البدنية والفنية، وظهرت المنتخبات بحالة أفضل مقارنة ببطولات سابقة أقيمت بعد مواسم مرهقة، في المقابل، سيعود مونديال 2026 إلى موعده الصيفي المعتاد، ما يعني أن اللاعبين سيخوضون المنافسات بعد نهاية موسم طويل وشاق، وهو ما قد يرفع معدلات الإرهاق والإصابات ويؤثر على جودة الأداء، خصوصًا في الأدوار المتقدمة.
وفي السياق ذاته، يبرز عامل الطقس، حيث كانت الظروف المناخية في قطر متشابهة إلى حد كبير بين الملاعب، مع السيطرة على مختلف المتغيرات بفضل تقنيات التبريد الحديثة، أما في مونديال 2026، فسيكون التنوع المناخي أحد أبرز التحديات، حيث ستقام بعض المباريات في أجواء حارة ورطبة بمدن مثل ميامي وهيوستن الأمريكيتين، فيما ستلعب مباريات أخرى في أجواء أكثر برودة في كندا والمدن الشمالية، إضافة إلى تحدي الارتفاع الكبير عن سطح البحر في مدينة مكسيكو سيتي، ما يفرض على المنتخبات التأقلم المستمر مع ظروف مختلفة.
وعلى مستوى التجربة الجماهيرية، سيكون المشهد مختلفا أيضا، ففي مونديال قطر عاش أكثر من ثلاثة ملايين و404 آلاف مشجع البطولة بشكل يومي متواصل، مستفيدين من سهولة الوصول إلى الملاعب عبر المترو والحافلات، فيما كانت مناطق المشجعين تعج بالحياة على مدار الساعة، ما شكل تجربة فريدة من نوعها، أما في كأس العالم المقبلة، فستكون الأمور أكثر تعقيدا، على الأقل بسبب الحاجة إلى التنقل الجوي بين المدن والدول، فضلا عن اختلاف القوانين والعملات والثقافات بين البلدان الثلاثة المستضيفة.
ولا شك أن المقارنات ستتسع أكثر بعد إسدال الستار على مونديال 2026، لأن الاختلاف لن يكون بين بطولتين فقط، بل بين فلسفتين مختلفتين في التنظيم. فقد قدمت دولة قطر بطولة قريبة، مكثفة، وسهلة الحركة، جعلت الجماهير تعيش كرة القدم في مساحة جغرافية محدودة، وسط تحديات جديدة كان كثير منها يحدث للمرة الأولى، وكانت النتيجة نجاحا مبهرا، أما نسخة 2026 فستكون عملاقة بأرقام قياسية من حيث عدد المنتخبات والمباريات والدول المستضيفة، ويبقى الرهان على النتائج النهائية للتجربة، وعندها سيكون السؤال الأبرز: هل كانت البطولة المتقاربة أكثر مثالية، أم أن البطولة الموسعة الأكبر في التاريخ ستنجح في فرض نموذجها الجديد؟ الإجابة، كما هي الحال دائما مع كأس العالم، سيكتبها التاريخ.

Paris: Aryna Sabalenka's bid for a first French Open title was left in tatters as she fell apart in a bizarre defeat by Russian 25th seed Diana Shnaider in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.

The world number one led by a set and a double-break before exiting the tournament in a blaze of unforced errors, collapsing to a 3-6, 7-5, 6-0 loss in blustery conditions on Court Philippe Chatrier.

"I feel like when I saw her (Sabalenka) being emotional, I was, like, 'Yes, like, you are in the right direction, you've got to stay, just focus on yourself, don't focus too much on her, what she's talking to her team or whatever she's doing'," said Shnaider after beating a top-10 player for only the second time in her career.

Shnaider will face Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska in the semi-finals on Thursday, with Marta Kostyuk or Mirra Andreeva awaiting the winner in Sunday's final.

"She's a very tricky player, so I'm not surprised that she's good. Sometimes, it just takes time," said the 22-year-old Shnaider of Chwalinska, who she beat at a lower-tier event in Istanbul four years ago.

Sabalenka was the only Grand Slam champion left in either the men's or women's singles draws at Roland Garros, but belied that status by making a whopping 57 unforced errors.

"You know those rooms where you just go in and you smash everything?," smiled Sabalenka when asked how she would get over the defeat.

"Probably I will spend a whole day tomorrow over there destroying stuff. Maybe it will help, maybe not."

Shnaider was playing in her first major quarter-final, but now finds herself a strong favourite to reach the final heading into her last-four tie against world number 114 and fellow left-hander Chwalinska.

"Definitely a special tournament for me here," added the Russian.

"It's going be a lefty battle so I'm looking forward (to the semi-final)."

Sabalenka's scarcely believable defeat was reminiscent of the way she threw away a strong position in last year's final against Coco Gauff.

"I knew the final, last year, I watched it. I knew that it was also super windy," said Shnaider.

"So of course I had that thought in the back of my mind that she was struggling with Coco last year. I was, like, 'Yeah, I've got to use this opportunity, I need to just adjust and do my best'."

Belarusian Sabalenka was playing in a 14th consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final but failed to become the first woman to make seven straight major semis since Serena Williams.

The top seed raced into a 5-1 lead and eventually sealed the opener on her third set point after initially failing to serve it out.

The second set followed a similar pattern at first, as Sabalenka moved 4-1 in front with a double-break before throwing away her next service game.

Sabalenka became increasingly frustrated as she gifted Shnaider three break points to level at 4-4.

After some animated remonstrating with her box, she recomposed herself enough to hold.

But the 28-year-old's game continued to come apart, as a string of dreadful unforced errors allowed Shnaider to break again and tie up the set at 5-5, with Sabalenka left to gesticulate wildly towards her coaching staff.

Shnaider could not believe her luck as Sabalenka dumped successive forehands into the bottom of the net to finish off the set and send the match into a decider.

The Russian grew in confidence and moved 2-0 up in the third as Sabalenka sprayed eight unforced errors around Chatrier in the space of two games.

Shnaider cruised to victory from there, fittingly securing a semi-final berth when Sabalenka knocked a routine backhand into the net on the third match point.

A stunned world number one was left to trudge off court after winning just 14 points in the deciding set.

Doha, Qatar: The Qatar Basketball Federation yesterday announced the Qatar men’s national basketball team will hold an overseas training camp in Antalya, Turkiye, from June 11 to 20, 2026.

This camp is part of the team’s technical and physical preparation program ahead of continuing its journey in the Asian and Oceanian qualifiers for the FIBA Basketball World Cup – Qatar 2027.

The camp, headed by Nasser Ajlan Al-Kaabi, Board Member of the Qatar Basketball Federation, comes within the current phase of preparations aimed at enhancing the players’ physical and technical readiness and strengthening team cohesion. Daily intensive training sessions will be conducted, focusing on tactical aspects under the supervision of the coaching staff led by Turkish coach Hakan Demir.

Following the team’s return from Turkiye, Qatar will play two friendly matches against Tunisia on June 23 and 25, 2026, at Al Gharafa Sports Hall.

Qatar will then compete in the second and third windows of the Asian and Oceanian qualifiers for the FIBA Basketball World Cup – Qatar 2027, with three crucial matches in Group D.

* The campaign resumes with a home clash against Saudi Arabia on Monday, June 29, 2026, at 7:00 PM at Al Gharafa Sports Hall, in a rescheduled fixture from the second window.

* Qatar will then face India away on Thursday, July 2, 2026, in Ahmedabad, as part of the third window.

* The team concludes this stage with another encounter against Saudi Arabia on Sunday, July 5, 2026, in Jeddah at 6:00 PM, in a decisive match for qualification.