Preparing the field for Sunday’s NFL game in Paris began months ago at an Italian farm near Milan

PARIS (AP) — Work on preparing the grass field for Sunday’s NFL game at Stade de France began months ago at an Italian farm near Milan.

So when the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints run out of the tunnel, the hope is that the surface will feel much like those back home.

“A new field was installed (at Stade de France) about three weeks ago. It was a field that was grown in Milan and then brought in by truck,” Nick Pappas, the NFL’s field director, said during a stadium tour on Thursday. “(The grass is) harvested at the farm, gets loaded with a number of rolls per truck, and then those trucks make their way on about a 10-hour journey (to Paris).”

Work at the farm began six months ago, Pappas said, adding that once the prepared grass arrived for the game it needed to be stitched to make what is known as a hybrid field.

“(It is) a predominantly natural grass surface that then has an amount of artificial fibres inserted into the ground that provide stability, durability and overall performance,” said Pappas, who has overseen the NFL’s international games since 2022.

The Stade de France normally hosts games for the French national teams in soccer and rugby, but an NFL-specific field needs to withstand a different kind of test.

“Soccer is very much a ball-on-the-ground sport, so the smoothness of how a ball rolls on a soccer pitch is critical to their game play,” Pappas said. “For us, our athletes are typically larger, faster, applying more force on the ground.”

Ensuring a field has good traction is therefore crucial.

“So athletes can run, cut, stop, move,” Pappas said. “All the (American) football movements.”

Another difference is that NFL fields are slightly longer, which meant the length of the Stade de France field had to be slightly extended. Yellow field goal posts also had to be erected at each end.

“We worked closely with the stadium team, who support us on getting the concrete bases in the ground,” Pappas said. “Then my team shows up and actually builds the field goal posts.”

Pappas said the only snag has been some rainy Parisian weather, but even that was a very minor issue.

“We’re familiar with the climate. Working out of North America we have climates of all kinds, all at the same time sometimes,” he said. “You can be playing in Miami, in Buffalo, in Seattle on the same day and have three completely different climates.”

Other challenges

To accommodate a 53-man NFL team, the locker room used by the Saints needed an additional 25 lockers plus extra showers, along with a medical room and a cooling tub.

Since it’s officially a Saints home game they got to pick which dressing room they wanted: the one used by France’s soccer and rugby teams, or the one used by visiting sides.

They chose the visitors’ locker room.

Here to stay?

In May, the NFL unveiled a record nine-match international schedule for 2026: starting with Melbourne in Australia and moving to Rio in Brazil, then swinging through Europe with stops in London, Paris, Madrid and Munich before ending in Mexico City.

Jon Barker, head of international games and major events for the NFL, hopes Sunday’s game is the first of many in France.

“This is a long-term investment for us,” he said Thursday. “This is a very important market for us. We’re opening offices here and our plan is to play many, many games in France.”

State-owned France Televisions is covering Sunday’s game, while sports daily L’Equipe will have a free-to-air broadcast. Barker hopes this will help grow the sport.

“It’s not just about coming in here for one day. It’s about our relationship with the fans that we already have in France and then starting to build new fans,” Barker added. “We think it’s the right time now to bring our sport to a global stage and there’s no more important market than France.”

Fans on Sunday should expect a unique gameday.

“We want fans to experience what it would be like in the U.S. and be in an NFL stadium. But you’re also going to see influences of Paris, of France, in everything we do,” Barker said. “You’re going to see it in our decorum, you’ll see it in our entertainment, you’ll see it in the way we present this game.”

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