Inside Tottenham Hotspur Stadium's 'pitch pocket'

Premier League clubs take their pitches seriously. Millions of pounds are spent maintaining the turf, which is heated from below and maintained by legions of groundsmen, often with robotic support. And Tottenham Hotspur keep theirs in the parking lot

The Tottenham Hotspur football pitch is stored inside the underground parking lot under the South Stand of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Dec. 5. The pitch can be stored in the space, which the club calls the "pitch pocket," for up to two weeks. [JIM BULLEY]

LONDON — Premier League clubs take their pitches incredibly seriously. Millions of pounds are spent maintaining the playing surface, which is normally a blend of natural turf with artificial fibers stitched in to reinforce it. The turf is heated from below, maintained with complex sprinkler systems and cut by legions of groundsmen, often with robotic support.

And when the Korea JoongAng Daily visited in early December, Tottenham Hotspur were keeping their pitch in the parking lot.

When Tottenham Hotspur Stadium opened in 2019, it not only became the new home of Tottenham football club — Son Heung-min commemorated the move by scoring the first ever goal there — but also the official home-away-from-home of American football and the NFL.

As an official NFL stadium, the first ever to be built outside of North America, Tottenham hosts at least two American football games every year as part of the NFL International Series, a series of regular season games played outside the United States.

But you can’t play two different sports — no matter how unfortunately similarly named — on the same pitch. Instead, Tottenham built two entirely different pitches, a traditional state-of-the-art football pitch mounted two meters above an artificial NFL pitch.

The football pitch at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium [TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR]

Spurs are not the first club to deploy a dual-pitch system, but they are the first stadium in the world to have a pitch that neatly divides into three sections before tucking itself away underneath the South Stand.

Each section of the pitch weighs just over 3,000 metric tons, leaving the entire thing just short of 10,000 metric tons, the equivalent of having to find somewhere to put more than 1,500 African elephants.

At Tottenham they chose the most obvious place to park your 10,000 metric ton football pitch — the parking lot.

The parking lot is under Spurs’ South Stand, a huge wall of seats making one huge stand, the largest single-tier in Britain. Based on Dortmund’s “Yellow Wall,” the South Stand is supposed to be the ultimate home end, a loud, rowdy wall of sound where every seat has an uninterrupted view of the pitch.

This behemoth of a tier is held up by three massive pillars that support the weight of the entire thing, because traditional stadium construction processes don’t necessarily apply to a section with 17,500 seats.

The three pillars are the reason the Tottenham football pitch divides into three, allowing it to fit around the supports as they continue down through the parking lot.

The artificial NFL pitch at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is used for a game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants on Oct. 9. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

The process of moving the 10,000-metric-ton pitch to the parking lot — which Tottenham insist on calling a “pitch pocket,” despite it being a cavernous space large enough to fit a 9,150-square meter (2.26-acre) swath of grass — is surprisingly quick, taking just 25 minutes to mechanically move from center stage to parking-lot-come-pitch-pocket.

Opportunities to see the pitch pocket in action are few and far between.

Despite the millions spent on creating and building the dual-pitch system, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium spends the vast majority of the year as a football stadium. While NFL games are not the only reason the turf is put away — concerts, boxing matches and rugby games have all been held on the artificial surface — in total fewer than 20 events each year require the removal of the grass.

One such event was the Tyson Fury vs. Derek Chisora boxing match on Dec. 3, when a ring and seating was erected on the NFL surface and the Spurs pitch was tucked neatly in its pocket. The Korea JoongAng Daily was invited to see the pitch pocket in action a few days later on Dec. 5 as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of the stadium and roof.

The Tottenham Hotspur football pitch is stored inside an underground parking lot known as the ″pitch pocket″ at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Dec. 5. [JINSIL YU]

Not much can prepare you for the sight of an entire football pitch in an underground parking lot. When parked in there, the playing surface sits over 1.5 meters off the ground and about a meter under the ceiling, creating a wall of metalwork with a barely visible carpet of green stretching into the distance.

In fact, the South Stand parking lot is an exceptionally high-tech setup, with grow lights and watering systems built into the ceiling that allow the pitch to be stored for up to two weeks underground without compromising the playing surface.

The robotic mowers that maintain the grass length when outside are still able to operate in the pitch pocket, meaning the turf remains in peak condition while underground, theoretically allowing for it to be pulled back out and played on within a matter of hours.

The side of the Tottenham Hotspur football pitch stored in the ″pitch pocket″ is visible during a tour of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London on Dec. 5. [JINSIL YU]

Back in the stadium, the decision to sit the NFL pitch 1.6 meters below the football pitch is entirely intentional — during NFL games, most of the team tends to stand along the side of the field, which would effectively block the view of the first few rows of seats at football pitch level.

The sunken pitch also means that seating can be added on the playing surface for concerts or boxing matches, again without having to sacrifice the view from the bottom row of the stands.

All that extra seating space means the stadium capacity can increase significantly for concerts and shows. All those extra people better take public transport though — the parking lot is already full.

BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]