FIFA to sell pieces of World Cup final pitch from $450, but not to Africa

FIFA will carve up the pitch from this year's World Cup final and sell it in $450 pieces, and anyone in Ghana hoping to own a slice is out of luck.

The turf ships only to the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.

The product, billed as the "FIFA World Cup 2026 Piece of the Pitch, Foundation Edition," is a fragment of grass from the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, set in a block of clear acrylic with a USB stick that plays a certificate of authenticity. Each square measures 17.5 by 17.5 by 17.5, in units FIFA does not clearly state but we assume will be centimetres. With nnly 2,026 to be made, and none of the pieces will ship out to buyers until the final is played.

For the millions across the continent who followed the tournament, the geography of the sale stings. The Black Stars were in it until July 4, when they bowed out to Colombia in the last 32. Africa's best shining team at the 2026 World Cup, Morocco, carried African hopes further, into a quarter-final against France, before falling.

A pitch the players didn't rate

There is an irony in the price tag. Some of the tournament's biggest names spent the group stage complaining about the very surface FIFA now wants to sell.

France midfielder Adrien Rabiot was blunt after playing on it. "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," he said.

Brazil's Vinicius Junior said the grass dried out in the heat and slowed the game to a crawl.

France coach Didier Deschamps suggested the trouble ran below the surface. "There might be some cement below the grass. You have very short shards of grass here," he said. MetLife normally lays an artificial pitch for American football, over a concrete base.

FIFA rejected the complaints. It said it had spent "more than five years" researching the playing surfaces, and that the pitches at all 16 stadiums "remain in excellent condition from both a playability and player safety perspective.

The $450 turf sits on top of a tournament already accused of pricing out ordinary supporters.

Seats for the final have reached $32,970, and hospitality packages climb above $34,000.

Selling the pitch itself is not a new idea for FIFA. It auctioned pieces of this same MetLife surface after last year's Club World Cup final, where Chelsea beat Paris Saint-Germain.

The sale caps a tournament in which FIFA has spent nearly as much energy defending itself as staging the football. Its president, Gianni Infantino, defended the body's processes after a contested red-card review that drew in even the United States president, one of several rows that shadowed the competition.