A World Cup pitch has finally been installed at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
The iconic stadium is due to host the 2026 Fifa World Cup final this summer.
But until this week, the stadium did not have an appropriate pitch for the football tournament.
Installing the new turf has been a massive logistical job for the workers.
27 trucks have driven the huge slabs of grass the 12-hour journey from North Carolina to the New Jersey venue.
Workers have been taking on ten-hour shifts at the stadium to lay the turf.
This includes laying down two feet of sand and a Permavoid layer.
The installations took two days to complete with more work still to be done to maintain it.
The pitch will see plenty of action at the tournament with eight matches scheduled to take place there.
FIFA senior pitch manager David Graham has hailed the efforts of the workers to get the job done.
He said: “The team that you see behind me, and in all of the other venues, spend meticulous time and effort (for) two, three months beforehand to get what you see on match day.
“They’re the first teams in, in the morning; they’re the last teams to leave and they’ll do it all again for close to a month.”
Workers have been laying out the slabs of grass onto the sand before it is tugged and pulled at to fasten it.
Dead clippings are then removed with leaf blowers, and then a roller is used to stabilize the turf.
Once all the work is fully completed, the attention will switch to maintaining the pitch.
Graham added: “We’ve got an extensive program in place (to maintain the pitch).
“We’ve got vacuum ventilation. We’re going to do the hybrid reinforcement this weekend.
“It’s quite an extensive program.
“We’d like the weather to be a little bit warmer, so the grass will grow.
“But it’s a system that normally takes six to eight weeks, and we repeat, repeat, repeat, until the end of the tournament.”
Fifa has spent a lot of money researching the playing surfaces for the World Cup.
It has proved more difficult due to the differing climates between host cities across Mexico, Canada and the US.
Graham said: “FIFA has put a lot of time effort into the research program.
“We, the pitch management team, are guided by the research, which gives us the tools to move forward, to put the infrastructure in place, to make it what you see here today.”
