Achraf Hakimi, the star of Morocco’s national team, dribbled a soccer ball around the streams of sprinkler water on an emerald stretch of grass at the Pingry School in New Jersey on Monday. From his perch just inside an empty goal, Neil Spagnuolo, keeper of that prized piece of horticulture known as Bugliari World Cup Field, stood in his work boots, hands on hips, glaring out at Hakimi and his teammates as they practiced.
Two days earlier, Morocco had fought to a draw against mighty Brazil in its first World Cup match at the Meadowlands, and by the time the team returned to Pingry to practice, the Moroccans were ranked sixth in the world. But Mr. Spagnuolo was not overly impressed. His only concern was the grass. His grass.
“I’m the quintessential old guy,” he said, “yelling, ‘Get off my lawn!’”
Not that the players were doing anything wrong. But Mr. Spagnuolo, Pingry’s grounds supervisor, will be the first to admit he is extremely protective. In anticipation of the World Cup’s arrival in the United States, he and a team of employees and administrators at Pingry, a private school in Basking Ridge, N.J., literally moved a sizable hill in order to expand and maintain two luscious grass fields to FIFA specifications.
Mr. Spagnuolo now dotes over the Kentucky bluegrass, which looked even more pristine than the field at MetLife Stadium, 36 miles away in East Rutherford, where eight World Cup games are being played.
Pingry risked several million dollars (it won’t say exactly how much, other than to acknowledge that it was a “multimillion dollar” effort) to host a World Cup team, a tradition that began when the United States first hosted the World Cup, in 1994. Teams like Italy, Scotland, Paris St. Germain, Manchester United, the United States women’s and men’s teams and many more have called the Pingry School their home base since then.
It all started with Charlie Stillitano, a Jersey kid, who was the head of the local host committee in 1994. He had been a star player at Pingry in the 1980s, playing under Miller Bugliari, who still coaches the team today, at 91. The Italian team was looking for a base in the United States in an era when there was no major professional soccer league and Mr. Stillitano recommended Pingry to the Italians.
Mr. Bugliari, who was 59 at the time, loved the idea and made his pitch to school administrators. He had starred for Pingry in the 1940s, and after his playing days at Springfield College had returned to teach biology and coach. The appeal of hosting Italy, one of the top teams in the world, seemed obvious. At the time, it was not a universal sentiment.
“Some people didn’t quite get it,” he said. “Someone mentioned that J.V. baseball had two games on that field and what would they do? I said, ‘OK, let them go to another school, but we’re missing a great opportunity. It will put this school on the map.’”
The Italians, who went all the way to the tournament final that year, loved it so much that the head of their federation, Antonio Matarrese, named his dog Pingry.
The dream was to complete that circle by bringing Italy back for this World Cup, but the Italians failed to qualify. Instead, Morocco, which reached the semifinal stage in 2022, got the spot.
“Italy has a flair, but Morocco is one of the top teams in the world,” Mr. Bugliari said. “The kids know all their players.”
And the field is much better now than it was 32 years ago.
As good as it was for Italy, Pingry administrators knew it needed an update. They expanded the site from one field to two, breaking ground the day after the last Pingry soccer games of the season were played in November 2024. They had until spring 2025 to meet FIFA’s deadline and be approved as an acceptable training site.
With time limited, work proceeded seven days a week. Alumni donated money for the project; one of them, who owned a construction company, provided free use of heavy equipment, including backhoes and hydraulic hammers to remove the hill and level the field.
The head of school, Tim Lear, was nervous because so much had been put at stake on the project. Unlike his predecessors in the ’90s, Mr. Lear, a Pingry graduate and one of Mr. Bugliari’s biology students, did not need persuading.
“When you double something in size, there is a risk of overstressing the organization and asking our people to do too much,” he said. “And that’s on top of running a school.” And then in March, as the fields were being prepared, Italy shockingly failed to qualify for the World Cup. There was a very real chance that no other team would take its place. “It could have happened,” Mr. Lear said, “and then it’s like, ‘Wait, what?’”
Each of the 48 World Cup teams selected a training site months ago, usually close to where its first-round games would be played. Some chose camps at the facilities of M.L.S. soccer clubs. Some opted for colleges, and even high schools.
Once construction was completed at Pingry, a parade of teams came to inspect it.
“Senegal, England, Scotland, Germany,” Mr. Lear said. “They all came through.”
Some arrived without even scheduling an appointment. Carl Frye, Pingry’s auxiliary operations director and the chief liaison between the school, FIFA and the teams, was in charge of the tours.
“Occasionally, I’d get an unexpected buzz from the front desk,” he said, “and they’d say, ‘Um, Colombia is here.’”
Three other teams also set up camp in New Jersey, with rent paid by FIFA. Haiti is at Stockton University and Senegal is at Rutgers. Brazil chose the new $100 million facility of the New York Red Bulls M.L.S. team in nearby Morris Township, N.J., with its eight fields, pools, gyms, nutrition center and everything else a professional team might need.
The Moroccans, whose second game is against Scotland in Boston on Friday, grabbed Pingry, and the school said FIFA pays it about a half a million dollars to host the Moroccans, who stay in a quiet hotel nearby. And they have kept Mr. Spagnuolo busy with unpredictable scheduling and special requests to water the field during practices. After a recent workout, which was open to 600 members of the Pingry community, someone asked Munir El Kajoui, Morocco’s backup goalie, to assess the field.
“Amazing,” he said. “It’s so good.”
The Moroccans could extend their stay at Pingry into July if they can emerge from the group stage. If they lose and go home early, another team could move in. The campus is convenient to the Meadowlands stadium, which will host three knockout-stage games, including the final on July 19.
After that, the fields revert to the school, and in the future other visiting professional teams will train there, too. But in the fall, the Pingry girls and boys teams get to play on fields fit for World Cup contenders, with Mr. Spagnuolo watching over every blade of grass.
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