MetLife Stadium’s World Cup makeover has given New York football fans something they’ve wanted for years: real grass underfoot, even if only for a short stretch.
That temporary switch has also sharpened the old argument around the Giants and Jets’ home field. FIFA’s rules forced the stadium to abandon artificial turf for the 2026 World Cup, and for a few weeks MetLife will look very different than it does on NFL Sundays. The change is a reminder of how long fans have pushed for grass at the stadium, especially after Malik Nabers’ season-ending ACL injury in Game 4 of the 2025 season.
The World Cup setup is not as simple as rolling out a fresh surface and calling it a day. FIFA requires sod to be grown with a plastic layer underneath, which makes the roots spread horizontally and creates a thicker grass layer.
In Vancouver, that process worked well at BC Place, where local sod drew strong reviews from players. At MetLife, though, the early returns have been rough.
After two matches, concerns about the surface were already out in the open. High-profile players including Brazil’s Vinicius Junior and France’s Adrien Rabiot said the pitch was dry and hard to play on, and France coach Didier Deschamps called it “special”. (He didn’t mean it in a good way.)
Vinicious Junior said that:
“Because of the weather and the heat, the grass dries out quickly and the game ends up being very slow. We can’t build up a rhythm,” the Real Madrid player told TNT Sports Brazil.
“That makes things difficult because we want to play. We want to move the ball from one side to the other and this disrupts our game. But we have to adapt because I believe it will be like this all tournament.
France head coach Didier Deschamps and player Adrien Rabiot called the grass at MetLife Stadium “a special surface - it’s different.”
“We need to get used to this. There might be some cement below the grass.
You have very short shards of grass here. But we do adjust.
This does create a change, but we take these technicalities into account.”
Rabiot shared a similar assessment. “Well,” he started, “the pitch was… I don’t know if I’d even call it that.
It seemed more like an artificial pitch. It was hard and rigid, but it’s like that for every team.
You need to adapt to the conditions.
“I hope we find better pitches in our other games.”
The complaints were not limited to player quotes. The surface has already drawn scrutiny from observers, and the criticism stretches back to Club World Cup matches at MetLife last year.
There is also a practical reason the stadium is such a tough place to keep grass alive. For a June-and-July tournament in New Jersey, warm-season Bermuda grass made the most sense on paper.
The weather, though, did not cooperate. May was not warm enough for the grass to grow as expected, and the sod had to be trucked in from North Carolina on a 12-hour drive after a local New Jersey source was ruled out by the Northeast winter.
Even with the World Cup in town, MetLife’s problem is not just getting grass to grow once. It is keeping it usable. The stadium will host eight World Cup matches in about a month and a half, more than it will handle for the Giants and Jets combined over a similar stretch.
And then there is the calendar after the World Cup. Starting Aug.
1, MetLife is packed with concerts and football games: BTS on Aug. 1-2, Chris Brown and Usher on Aug.
7-6, Guns N’ Roses on Aug. 12, the Jets’ preseason game against Tampa Bay on Aug. 14, the Giants’ preseason game against Minnesota on Aug. 15, Bruno Mars on Aug. 21, 22, 25 and 26, Jets-Giants on Aug.
28, Ed Sheeran on Sept. 4-5, BigBang on Sept.
11, Giants-Cowboys on Sept. 13, Karol G on Sept.
17-18, Jets-Packers on Sept. 20, AC/DC on Sept. 25, and Giants-Titans on Sept.
That kind of traffic may be the real obstacle. The field would not just have to survive football; it would have to survive a nonstop run of concerts and events, with plenty of people on it in between. Cost is part of it too, and any permanent switch would require Jets owner Woody Johnson to agree and share the expense, not just the Maras and Tisches.
For now, the World Cup has at least proven one thing: MetLife can host grass, but it does not mean the case for permanent grass is suddenly easy. Still, after years of complaints, the debate is back in the spotlight. Maybe this tournament will be the moment the owners finally listen.
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