For Gary Bartley, a 66-year-old head groundskeeper in Vancouver, the 2026 FIFA World Cup has meant lifting standards far beyond his usual routine—after 48 years in turf care, with help from researchers at major universities and hands-on work that starts before
At 7 a.m., before the players arrive, Gary Bartley is already out on the field at the National Soccer Development Centre in Vancouver. His crew of seven cuts grass, repairs divots, and makes sure the training surface is ready for the day’s session—work that usually runs from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Bartley is 66. He has been in turf care since 1978, when he was a teenager. For nearly five decades, he has worked to keep fields playable. But helping prepare the training pitches that Team Canada will use during the 2026 FIFA World Cup is different—so big it still feels like a once-in-a-lifetime assignment.
“The World Cup hasn’t changed our workday too much,” Bartley says, “but the main difference is that we’ve had to raise our standards and maintenance practices to meet FIFA’s requirements.”
The NSDC, where Team Canada will train, is usually used by the Vancouver Whitecaps. When the Whitecaps train here—which is typically five days a week—Bartley’s schedule shifts to match theirs. They usually arrive around 10:30 a.m., and one member of his team stays nearby to help with watering needs. After training finishes, the routine turns to repair and reset: divot work, cleanup, and preparation for the next day.
On non-training days, Bartley’s team takes on maintenance tasks such as vertical cutting or top dressing. The effort is constant, but it becomes more exacting once the World Cup preparations begin.
“In the past few weeks, we’ve gone through major renovations since the Whitecaps finished training here in May,” Bartley says. “It was a very labor-intensive process. We carried out heavy verticutting, top dressing, overseeding, and re-sodded parts of the pitches.”
Fixing divots is physically hard work. It can also be mentally tedious—especially when the calendar compresses deadlines. Bartley describes the daily scale of the task: mowing the two pitches on foot takes three mowers about 2.5 hours. and his staff can cover around 20. 000 steps in a typical morning.
The biggest shift, he says, has been the level of detail required to keep training conditions as close as possible to the main match pitch so that competition remains equal and fair for all teams.
He points to FIFA’s attention to agronomic practice as a major driver of that change. Bartley says FIFA has invested significant time and effort into researching improved maintenance procedures. and he has had the chance to learn from scholars at the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University. Those lessons, he says, are already changing how the Whitecaps approach pitch work.
It isn’t only the grass that has sharpened his focus. Bartley says he’s also been “amazed by the level of detail around the whole tournament. ” from security to hospitality to guest services—areas that he previously took for granted and kept at the edge of his attention. until the scope of staging the World Cup at this level became undeniable.
For Bartley, the motivation is personal as much as professional. His family is excited and proud that he is involved. He wasn’t a soccer fan before joining the Whitecaps, and he still isn’t a fanatic. But he says he’s become a fan in a quieter way—by seeing the work behind the game.
“It’s very rewarding to sit and look at a pitch and realize that world-class soccer players will be training on it,” he says. “It makes you want to make it the best possible.”
He got into the industry 48 years ago because he loved turf care, and he still does. At 66, the project is his career highlight—an opportunity he never expected to land. “Being as old as I am. ” Bartley says. “it’s amazing to have the opportunity to be involved in the World Cup and put an asterisk beside my career.”.
The sequence of changes is clear in the fieldwork: the day-to-day routines remain recognizable. but the renovations in the weeks since the Whitecaps trained here in May—and the higher standards tied to FIFA’s requirements—have turned regular maintenance into a tournament-prep mission. For Bartley. the learning has been constant. from the heavy verticutting and top dressing to the new agronomic practices shared by experts at the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University.
By the time the Whitecaps arrive around 10:30 a.m. the grass has already been cut. the divots repaired. and the pitch made ready. For the man who started in turf care in 1978. it’s a familiar craft played at an unfamiliar scale—one that keeps teaching him new things even after nearly 50 years on the job.
Gary Bartley groundskeeper turf care National Soccer Development Centre NSDC Team Canada 2026 FIFA World Cup Vancouver Whitecaps pitch renovation FIFA requirements verticutting overseeding top dressing re-sodded pitches University of Tennessee Michigan State University