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 this past week. 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 in the Meadowlands, and by the time the team returned to Pingry to practice, the Moroccans were ranked sixth in the world. But 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 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, New Jersey, literally moved a sizable hill in order to expand and maintain two luscious grass fields to FIFA specifications.
