For Patrick Beach, one detail jumped out after the first FIFA World Cup 2026 game in Vancouver, the grass.
“The pitch was great quality tonight, especially when it was nice and wet. The ball was rolling really well,” the Australian goalkeeper told The Canadian Press after the game against Turkey on June 14.
“Once we landed and we had a pitch inspection … everyone was buzzing, they loved it, thought it was pretty cool.”
That reaction meant a lot to John Sorochan, the Canadian turf expert FIFA tasked with developing the pitches for all 16 World Cup stadiums across Canada, the United States and Mexico.
“It’s a lot of work, a lot of sweat and tears, a lot of sleepless nights that went into this,” Sorochan, a University of Tennessee distinguished professor who was born in Calgary, told Day 6 host Brent Bambury.
Sorochan said FIFA senior pitch manager Alan Ferguson approached him about the job over tea and biscuits in London. Sorochan agreed, and his team at the University of Tennessee partnered with the University of Michigan on a project that took the last five years.
Researchers first studied the impact and energy of the ball as it hit the turf.
“What we wanted is the ball not to bounce too high off of the surface, or too low,” Sorochan said.
They used a training machine usually used by goalkeepers to practise saves to launch soccer balls at an angle onto the grass. High-speed cameras and radar detectors measured the speed and angle at which the ball hit the turf, along with its velocity and angle after the bounce.
The team also invented a machine with a 3D-printed foot fitted with a cleat to test how the turf handled players running and cutting. It also measured what a 172-pound soccer player, the average weight of World Cup athletes from the last two events, would feel while running on the field.
The experiments were run in different conditions and with grasses cut at different heights.
The goal was consistency across a tournament spread over three countries, with indoor and outdoor stadiums needing different kinds of grass but the same feel.
Sorochan said indoor stadiums use a mix of 70 percent Kentucky bluegrass and 30 percent ryegrass, grasses often used for homelawns, cemeteries and sports fields. He said the open-air stadium in Miami, for example, requires Bermuda grass.
Those grasses need different management and different mowing heights.
“We want to make sure if a team’s playing in Miami and then going up to Boston or Toronto to play, we want to make sure that the ball is going to perform similarly as if they’re in the same stadiums,” Sorochan said.
Some of the grass, including the field at B.C. Place Vancouver, was grown in British Columbia by Bos Sod Farms in Abbotsford.
Now the fields are being managed by stadium teams, including at B.C. Place Vancouver and Toronto Stadium. Sorochan said that work involves specialized irrigation, a UV-light system and up to 50 people.
“I think when people look at this turf they say, ‘Oh, it’s just grass.’ But it’s much more than just grass,” Tony Valante, who is in charge of infrastructure at B.C. Place Vancouver, told CBC News.
At B.C. Place, the field has a built-in vacuum system to manage moisture. Between games, the maintenance team mows, repairs and waters the field, and also sets up grow lights because the grass does not receive natural sunlight.
“If [players] do talk about the pitch, it’s usually because they slipped or something was wrong,” Sorochan said. “But so far this World Cup, we’ve been hearing people say that’s the best surface they’ve ever played on … it gives me goosebumps.”
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