INTERNATIONAL SOCCER out to you in terms of the biggest individual challenges? Was there anything you were proud that this team was able to overcome and figure out.
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ings in America have quite a diverse business plan. They may have some soccer matches, some NFL matches, they might do some concerts. So they need to flip in and out throughout the year. I ' d like to think that some of the research that we ' ve brought to the market here in the United States will stay. We ' ve had people at a number of venues speak to us, asking for specifications. We ' ve been delighted to share that.
Then with the evolution of the MLS— many of the clubs are putting together hybrid pitches now because they have bespoke stadiums. We ' ve been very happy to work and collaborate with that and connect them with people. So the networking just continues to grow, which can only be good for us as the world organization because that ' s what we should do. It ' s really great to see the MLS developing in the way that it is. You see players coming across from America to Europe, and Europe back to America as the seasons overlap. It might not be so much going forward when you realign with our season, but up until now it ' s been really good. And it ' s really good quality football on both sides. They ' re also talking about the quality of facilities being equal, and that never happened before.
When I had some of the press conferences at Club World Cup, some of the European guys, especially the younger ones, were caught out a little bit. They just didn ' t know what they were getting. But I remember listening to England striker Harry Kane and he said what a wonderful opportunity it was for players that were probably going to be at the World Cup to come over a year out, experience shallow pitch profiles, experience the heat, experience game delays because of adverse weather— all things that are normal in the U. S., but maybe not normal where they play the game.
So I think there ' s a number of fantastic legacy opportunities. These undergrads are going out into the industry to top jobs with stadiums, sod farms, or as consultants, and keeping that momentum going that ' s been built up. I think that will be the biggest legacy that FIFA can leave.
SFM: You have mentioned the challenges of managing this tournament across such diverse climates, across the three nations. Was there anything that stood
Ferguson: I was really nervous about the domed stadiums, because typically we play in open-air stadiums and I know we had to change some of our regulations to accommodate that. But when you play in a domed stadium, you have to recreate the natural environment that the grass wants because we ' re not playing on synthetic, we ' re playing on real grass; we ' re playing on a living plant. You have to recreate airflow and light, and you have to manage moisture. That was really, really difficult. And I wasn ' t sure how we were going to do it.
I knew the research would kind of point us in the right direction. I never could have dreamt that it would be so comprehensive in what it ' s delivered. And I think that ' s where we ' ll be enormously in debt to the research teams for sticking to the tasks. There are more than 200 individual tasks that have been undertaken in the research period to give us that. And never has a tournament in the States had to deal with so many matches as the Club World Cup did. Typically, it ' s been one or two pitches and then it ' s been stripped out and a new layer of sod comes in. But for a player, it ' s the worst thing you can do because it breaks the consistency. It makes them a bit wary of what they ' re playing on. They don ' t get that feel coming through their feet, so their brain ' s telling them that they ' re not on the surface that they want to be on. We never got that. We got a bit of a complaint about fields being slow, but you know, we were playing in 40-degrees-plus( C) heat. We were kicking off in the middle of the day, so it wasn ' t a major surprise. But even out
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