{"id":742570,"date":"2026-06-17T15:15:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/742570\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:15:19","slug":"world-cup-2026-adrien-rabiot-raises-concerns-about-new-york-new-jersey-stadium-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/742570\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Adrien Rabiot raises concerns about New York New Jersey Stadium pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

France midfielder Adrien Rabiot has raised concerns about the quality of the pitch at the New York New Jersey Stadium, describing it as “more like an artificial surface”.<\/p>\n

France started their World Cup campaign with a 3-1 win against Senegal<\/a> at the venue in New Jersey on Tuesday, which is home to NFL teams the New York Giants and Jets.<\/p>\n

Also known as the MetLife Stadium, it is due to host England’s final group game against Panama on 27 June, as well as the World Cup final on 19 July.<\/p>\n

Rabiot, 31, started and played the full match, assisting Bradley Barcola for the second goal, before criticising the pitch after France’s victory.<\/p>\n

“The pitch… I don’t even know if you can call it that. It felt more like an artificial surface – quite hard and quite rigid,” Rabiot said.<\/p>\n

Rabiot’s complaints echo Brazil forward Vinicius Junior, who cited the pitch’s dryness after his side’s 1-1 draw with Morocco<\/a> in their opening fixture.<\/p>\n

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

The 78,576-capacity stadium has had a temporary grass pitch installed for the World Cup in place of its artificial surface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France midfielder Adrien Rabiot has raised concerns about the quality of the pitch at the New York New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-742570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}