2026 FIFA World Cup™ pitchside story

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A witty person by nature, Dr. John C. Sorochan says that he will not talk about the fan experience, the light-emitting diode (LED) boards, how to get rid of trash in the stadiums but on the topic – “the biggest asset that actually cost money to look after and it is the field.”

As he puts in, “I’ll be talking about the challenges of the 2026 World Cup, and the legacy elements that can be integrated into venue design. Maybe it comes down to synchronizing some of the music and how it comes down to help the grass grow or to play classical music for the plants.”

Dr. John C. Sorochan works as a Professor in the University of Tennessee, US, and also serves as the Director of the UT Center for Athletic Field Safety. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in the design, installation and maintenance of safe, sustainable and high-performance sports turf surfaces.

In an exclusive talk with ‘Coliseum’, Dr. John C. Sorochan, Distinguished Professor, Turfgrass Science, University of Tennessee, US, details how he is leading a team of people working on the 2026 World Cup pitch project and do research on all the 16 stadiums – “If you look at the last five World Cups – it’s gone from pitch management to leverage of the pitch to management planning and all that by the Host Country or the local authorities.”
 

2026 FIFA World Cup™

The 2026 FIFA World Cup™ will be the 23^rd FIFA World Cup™, the quadrennial international Men’s soccer championship contested by the national teams of the member associations of FIFA. The tournament will take place from June 11^th-July 19^th, 2026. It will be jointly hosted by 16 Cities – 11 in the United States, three in Mexico and two in Canada. The tournament will be the first FIFA World Cup™ to be hosted by three nations and the first to include 48 teams, an expansion from 32.
 

Background

 

World Cup 1994

Dr. John C. Sorochan recounts, “I got into the turf management subject 31 years back as a student in the Michigan State University. During the 1994 World Cup held in the United States we first put grass inside the now-demolished 82,000-plus capacity Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, United States. And that’s where I got to meet Allan Ferguson and work with him. He is now the Senior Pitch Manager for FIFA. At that time in 2016 FIFA had 64 employees. They now have over 1,200. The leadership has changed, the focus, the way FIFA goes has completely changed. Now, we have a team of people working on this World Cup pitch project but before everything was outsourced.”
 

Qatar 2022

“For the 2022 Qatar World Cup the FIFA took over the management planning and the pitch management training but the research was still done by the host country at the time and pitch research was a vision of Allan and I led the research. For the 2026 World Cup Allan said, ‘I want evidence-based research to help execute this World Cup in 2026.’ And FIFA has for the first time funded anything related to pitch research.”
 

FIFA World Cup 2026™

 

16 cities hosting the World Cup

“In Qatar, there were eight stadiums. Now, we have got Vancouver (Canada) to Mexico City (Mexico) 4,900 kms apart over 3,000 miles and everything in between. We have got three host countries, multiple languages, 16 host cities, 48 from 32 participating nations and instead of 64 matches there is now 104 matches. And the FIFA had a set of requirements that they expect. Half the play on the natural grass surfaces has to be hybrid reinforced stitched primarily, has to have an automatic irrigation system, has to have a profile system with drainage, integrated vacuum ventilation system where you could suck water in and push it in and pull it out and it has to have pitch grow lights, the grow lights that help get the grass to grow on a cover faster.”

“There are all sorts of things that keep me up at night and if you look at the host city stadiums some of them are easy and some are not. Instead of breaking them up in a map where they are geographically located we located that of the 16 stadiums only eight of them have natural grass. The other eight are artificial and five of those eight are indoors. Now we have been asked to keep the grass alive indoors. Also, different grasses. These grasses grow differently but how does the ball interact with that surface. We do a lot of different things with focus on research and consistency and uniformity. We want the player reaction to be positive.”
 

fLEX

In order to achieve the above we developed a machine field or foot layer lower extremities (fLEX). We can test different things with the machine, different shoes on this, we can measure the consistency and the uniformity of how the different surfaces can be homogenous by the footwear of the athlete and the surface. So, we can get a heat map and show where is the surface which has worn out. We have validated this machine by mechanics forces and we can go and test the field within an hour, come up with the heat map and show how that surface wears out. It’s a great tool which helps in remediation of the fields wearing out.”
 

Sod on Plastic

Another big technology we did was – growing sod on plastic. You go cut the roots off and when we harvest this sod we cut it off like a pizza, roll it up and we move it into a stadium and it’s not stressed because we cut all the roots off. We just put it into a new environment. So, we have got requirement where we grow sod on plastic, hybrid system maintenance and coming up with different technologies and installed on the pitches. One of the things that is not going to be used in 2026 is the shallow pitch profile. This is a technology that has been around for quite a while. We could take out the artificial turf in the stadium, put it away and you get the concrete floor and there is a permavoid layer down. You put a geotextile down and you put sod on it. We put it inside our FIFA building, we tested and within two days the roots stacked into the geotextile and you can separate the sod from it. We put it into fruition in September 2024 at the 80,000-capacity AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, US.”
 

AT&T Stadium

“This is where the game changer is – 16 hours to put the permavoid and install the sod in the AT&T Stadium. So, no excuse. In a multiuse stadium in 16 hours you can do load-in with a pitch in that place like a conventional pitch inside the domed AT&T Stadium like a concrete. We tested with fLEX at the AT&T Stadium and on that concrete it is just like a natural grass surface. What about the build-up or the load-out? It only took nine hours to remove that pitch. You can go on to your next event. You can have whatever you want inside. So, those are some of the things that we are looking at of doing innovation wise and being able to make it a game changer.”
 

Closing Down

Dr. John C. Sorochan concluded by stating, “The FIFA built a 5,000 square foot indoor structure for us to do the testing indoors and inside we have got all the different grasses and we try to test them indoors. And we come up with ideas of how much light, how many hours it takes, can one use less hours and more intense light to be able to use less, can one do all sorts of things trying to figure out ways to be innovative to leave a legacy beyond 2026.”

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