MetLife Stadium's Grass Draws Criticism from World Cup Players

Adrien Rabiot left New Jersey with three points, an assist and a warning.

France opened their World Cup campaign with a 3-1 win over Senegal at the New York New Jersey Stadium on Tuesday, but the Juventus midfielder walked off the MetLife pitch shaking his head at a surface he felt belonged to a different sport.

“It felt more like an artificial surface – quite hard and quite rigid,” the 31-year-old said after playing the full 90 minutes and setting up Bradley Barcola for France’s second goal. “The pitch... I don’t even know if you can call it that.”

World Cup glamour, NFL grass

This is no minor venue. MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and New York Jets, will stage England’s final group game against Panama on 27 June and, most significantly, the World Cup final on 19 July. For the tournament, its much-maligned artificial turf has been covered with a temporary grass pitch.

On paper, that solves the problem. Underfoot, players are telling a different story.

The grass, laid over a base built for American football, has drawn early criticism for its firmness and the way it behaves under heat. Rabiot’s comments add weight to concerns already voiced by Brazil’s Vinicius Junior after his side’s 1-1 draw with Morocco at the same World Cup.

“In the second half, with the heat, the pitch dries out very quickly,” Vinicius said. “The game becomes very sluggish and we can’t get into our rhythm.”

That rhythm matters. Teams built on quick combinations and sharp changes of direction rely on a surface that gives and glides. Instead, the early verdict from two of the tournament’s most gifted technicians is of a field that grips, jars and slows.

A stadium with a reputation

The anxiety around MetLife does not come from nowhere. The stadium’s artificial turf already carries a grim nickname in NFL circles: the “MetLife curse”.

Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers tore his anterior cruciate ligament there in September, just the latest in a line of serious injuries suffered on the surface. For years, players and coaches across the league have questioned why one of the sport’s flagship arenas continues to be associated with non-contact collapses and season-ending diagnoses.

Now, with a temporary grass layer rolled out on top, footballers are stepping into a stadium that has long been a lightning rod in a different code.

The crowd of 78,576 who watched France beat Senegal saw no horror injuries, but they did watch a game that often felt sticky, stop-start, heavy. When the temperature rose, the ball seemed to cling to the turf, exactly as Vinicius described days earlier.

Tournament under scrutiny

MetLife is not alone. A total of eight temporary grass pitches have been installed across 16 World Cup host venues, including Boston Stadium, where Scotland began their campaign with a 1-0 win over Haiti last week. Scotland return there for their second Group C match against Morocco on Friday (23:00 BST), hoping the surface holds up under the strain of back-to-back fixtures.

The governing bodies wanted a global showpiece in some of the biggest arenas in North America. That meant retrofitting football onto stadiums designed for other sports, other demands, other calendars.

Now the players are feeling the compromise under their boots.

Rabiot’s France will expect to be back at MetLife deep into the tournament. England already know they will finish their group stage there. Senegal are due to return on 22 June to face Norway, carrying not just the memory of defeat to France but the knowledge of what awaits them underfoot.

The football will go on. The question, as the World Cup edges towards its showpiece final on this contentious patch of grass, is whether the pitch can rise to the occasion as well as the players.