Tottenham Hotspur have unveiled plans to include the world's first dividing retractable football pitch in their new stadium. Yep, what we're looking at here is a turfed football pitch that sits on top of an artificial American Football pitch and slides under the South Stand when the Americans are in town.
Unsurprisingly, this would be the first pitch in the world to do such a thing and it's a concept that Spurs have tried, tested and are close to installing. Having agreed a deal to host two NFL games per season for ten years the club have found a way of preserving their football pitch when the American styled football hits the capital.
The artificial American Football pitch takes the bottom bunk and will sit below a turf soccer pitch which slides out in three segments and moulds together to seal any spaces. Once the pitch is in place the touchline and tunnel ramps are raised to be in line with the higher level. The whole process will take around 25 minutes.
Tottenham are using SCX to supply the unique pitch and have released a statement: "SCX will design, engineer, build and install the innovative real turf football pitch, which will sit in three pitch-long steel trays, weighing more than 3,000 tonnes each. The surface will split into three sections to show each tray before retracting under the South Stand to reveal the artificial playing surface underneath. Once the grass pitch is returned, the joins are invisible and undetectable allowing for a Premier League quality playing surface every matchday."
Next level stuff. Let's just hope that "retract button" is well hidden during those 90 minutes. Harry Kane missing a World Cup because he fell down a pitch crack would look very bad on everyone.
