Sports

Fans Make ‘MetLife Curse’ Jokes After Stadium Award 2026 FIFA World Cup Final

#Soccer
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Getty Image / Liu Yanan/Xinhua


MetLife Stadium, home of the New York Giants and New York Jets, is known for being the home of a bunch of catastrophic injuries. So much so, that when someone mentions the “MetLife curse”, NFL fans know exactly what’s being referred to.

Most notably, New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles on the MetLife turf just a few snaps into his team debut all the way back in week 1 of the 2023 NFL season.

That didn’t bother FIFA, as they awarded the final of the 2026 FIFA World Cup to the suburban New York City stadium on Sunday, twenty-nine months before the game will be played.

There’s long been criticism of what many players and fans feel is lackluster artificial turf at MetLife Stadium that causes injuries at a higher rate. This is a point of contention in the NFL as a whole, with players alleging that research shows a higher rate of injuries on artificial turf compared to natural grass. Thirteen NFL stadiums use natural grass, two use a hybrid, and fifteen (seventeen teams, due to shared stadiums in New York and Los Angeles) use turf.

But, high-level professional soccer players simply don’t play on turf. Injury risk is part of it, but they feel the ball doesn’t perform naturally on turf instead of a well-manicured grass field. Typically, when top European clubs play friendlies in American stadiums that have turf, those stadiums put natural grass down in the stadiums. That will be the case for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as all the games will be played on natural grass, including in MetLife Stadium.

But, that’s not stopping fans from making jokes about the “MetLife Curse” after the news of the announcement.

Hopefully there will be an injury-free final in 2026, and hopefully it ends with the USMNT taking home their first World Cup.