There were two unmistakable conclusions to be drawn from the CONCACAF Nations League finals at SoFi Stadium.
The first is that the U.S. men’s soccer team, which finished fourth out of four teams, is nowhere near ready for next year’s World Cup. The stadium, on the other hand, nailed its most important dress rehearsal, rolling out a hybrid grass carpet that weathered the strain of four games in as many days.
“The pitch exceeded our expectations,” said Otto Benedict, the stadium’s senior vice president for facility and campus operations. “While we were confident that the grass would respond well to the level of play and activity, we were uncertain of its resilience inside our building. Over the past two weeks, the weather has been variable with rain and heavy moisture in the air, followed by wind and warm temperatures with sunny days.
“The grass has been thriving and has adapted to our unique indoor/outdoor environment in all the ways we had hoped.”
That’s important because SoFi is attempting something unique. When the stadium, the most expensive sports venue in history, opened in 2020 it did so with a field that was fine for the NFL but too narrow for soccer. And the grass was synthetic, which was also a no-no for a World Cup.
To bring things up to FIFA standards, Benedict had to figure out a way to make the playing surface wider and how to cover the fake turf with the real stuff.
The first problem was actually the easiest to solve. For the Nations League games, the SoFi field was 72 yards wide — 2.4 yards too narrow for the World Cup — and the corners were unacceptably tight. To fix that, Benedict said some field-level suites and approximately 400 seats in the lower bowl will be temporarily removed for next summer’s tournament.
Installing and growing natural grass robust enough to stand up to eight games in 28 days was far more complicated and required a partnership between SoFi, FIFA and researchers at the University of Tennessee and Michigan State. The result was a series of surfaces stacked 28 inches above the NFL playing field.
The pitch was built on a base called “the permavoid,” a substructure designed to support the field while allowing air and moisture to move under the root zone. It includes sand and permeable cloth topped with a hybrid carpet of cool-season grass grown in Lake Moses, Wash., trucked to Inglewood, then rolled out in strips four feet wide and 45 feet long.
The key part of the cutting-edge, sub-air system is made up of 100,000 square feet of 2-foot-by-4-foot black plastic crates that permits air to flow through while allowing water to be sucked out when needed. That allows the oxygen to move beneath the grass while preventing the field and the root zone from getting too wet.
It addition to the grass laid out inside the stadium, another 10,000 square feet is kept in a parking lot in case worn sections of the field need to be repaired. The temporary surface will remain in place through an April 5 women’s friendly between the U.S. and Brazil. The field will then be tested for traction and durability as well as health before being removed. A new field of Desert Green cool-season grass will then be installed for this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup.
The World Cup surface, which will be improved with information gathered during this month’s trial run, will be installed in April 2026, about two months before the U.S. team’s World Cup opener at SoFi Stadium.
The technology is a major improvement over the way temporary grass fields were laid over artificial turf for previous tournaments that used NFL stadiums, such as the Gold Cup. The grass on those fields often wasn’t stable and had wide, dangerous seams where sections of the pitch came together.
“This one's definitely better than a lot of the Gold Cup ones,” Canadian goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair said of the SoFi field. “You can definitely tell that there was no separation in the grass and it had time to grow.”
“It was interesting. It was a bit different [from] what we’re used to,” U.S. forward Tim Weah said. “This grass is different. It’s something that we have to get used to.”
The hybrid field, Benedict said, requires a crew of 30 to install and maintain, about double the staff needed to care for SoFi’s Matrix Turf surface for the NFL games. The field’s multimillion-dollar price tag will be paid by the the Los Angeles World Cup 2026 Host Committee.
“A cool-season hybrid carpet pitch system is the best system for our stadium,” Benedict said when asked what he learned from the Nations League matches. “The successful integration of our irrigation, sub-air and permavoid systems has provided us with the confidence and data necessary to validate this design, particularly as we prepare for the 2026 World Cup.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
