Irrigation was no small feat, as according to the Economic Times, a typical soccer field can consume 26,000 gallons of water per day, and freshly laid sod like the ones placed in cities like New Jersey, Philadelphia, Seattle, Atlanta and more consume even more. 

If you look at that as irrigation consumption on a game day alone, there were 104 matches of the World Cup with each match using 26,000 gallons. Over 2.7 million gallons were used just to maintain the field on a game day, even before you got into regular maintenance of all 16 venues over the 39 days of the tournament.

Over 2 million gallons of water were used on game days by the time the World Cup final in New Jersey came to a conclusion. Courtesy / Kerith Gabriel

In order to ensure the pitches would be pristine for the tournament at every venue, FIFA’s turf management experts consulted turf management labs at Michigan State University and the University of Tennessee to evaluate the challenges that 16 stadiums in three different countries, each with different grass varieties for different climates would bring. 

A big part of that was just how much water it would take to stay ahead of the game. During a call with media members in advance of the World Cup, FIFA’s chief turf management expert, Alex Ferguson, discussed what that might look like and how the strategy for each field took a concerted effort, not just working with professors at both universities, but the field management teams across all 16 venues. 

“If you think about it, we had to go into mostly NFL buildings, which host America’s biggest sport, but were never really built for international soccer,” Ferguson told reporters in advance of the tournament. “We’ve had to create what we’ve called the ‘shallow pitch profile,’ which we’ve researched and tested across a number of stadiums during [last summer’s FIFA] Club World Cup. It wasn’t a one cap fits all … but much of the research that’s been done at both universities prepared us for how each venue would perform.” 

In short, a “shallow pitch profile” is a fancy technical term for how turf that’s brought in works on top of the existing field that’s been roughed up to allow for the grass that’s installed to lay in quickly. There’s a belief too, that the install would need more than the projected 26,000 gallons initially to withstand the rigors of multiple matches in a short span — but then need to be watered at certain times in order to maintain over the life of the tournament. 

This was particularly the case for the eight venues during the tournament that were turf fields, which were transformed into natural grass for the games. 

While most of the country experienced some sort of heat wave over the course of the World Cup, FIFA’s turf scientists were particularly vigilant about monitoring pitch performance and irrigation in hot, dry climates like the eight games played at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and the record nine games in Dallas that included a World Cup semifinal game between France and eventual winners Spain. 

“There was a good deal to consider in this research, said Dr. John Sorochan, turf management expert and professor at the University of Tennessee. “We’ve got five indoor stadiums. We’ve got eight total pitches that are synthetic that have to be converted to natural grass, and the ability to provide evidence-based science and data to come up with a system that’s going to help provide consistency and uniformity across all the surfaces is key.”