What it took to convert Gamecocks’ Williams-Brice field into a soccer pitch

On Saturday evening, the unthinkable will happen.

In Columbia, South Carolina, two of the biggest sporting clubs in the world will face off. For the final leg of their U.S. Tour, English Premier League squads Manchester United and Liverpool will play a friendly match in front of over 76,000 people .

It is so unthinkable that arguably the two biggest soccer teams in England would not just come to SEC country, but play in an actual SEC venue. It is also unthinkable that the University of South Carolina actually pulled it off, worked through all the logistical hassles and headaches and made it happen.

An example: Before soccer could come to Williams-Brice Stadium, it needed to be a certainty that soccer would fit inside Williams-Brice Stadium.

For those unfamiliar: A football field measures 53.5 yards across while the soccer pitch on Saturday will extend 70 yards wide. And, well, few college football stadiums have more cramped sidelines than Williams-Brice, with hardly enough room for players, a camera cart and other folks to share space.

There was no concern over the length — with the end zones, a football field has a few feet on a soccer pitch — but the width was such an initial concern that there were talks of tearing out some of the hedges that line Williams-Brice and then replanting them after the game.

Before the trimmers came out, though, former South Carolina senior deputy athletics director Chance Miller (who is now the AD at Coastal Carolina ) had the grounds crew measure out soccer-pitch dimensions to see if it was doable.

Tim Flanagan, who oversees sports turf operations at USC, grabbed measuring tape and laid a highly-visible pink string in a massive 110-by-70-yard rectangle.

The good news: The hedges were safe.

The bad news: There wasn’t enough grass at Williams-Brice to cover a soccer pitch, so South Carolina needed to lay grass over concrete in each of the four corners — a task not quite as easy as it sounds.

You see, a football field is sloped. From the center, there is a slight decline toward the drains behind the sidelines. Then, the ground from the hedges to the drain tilt in the opposite direction. It’s like a big “W” with the dips being each drain.

In a process that took almost all of July 10, Environmental Landscaping Inc. out of Abbeville put landscape cloth down, then perfectly sloped a sand and organic soil mix so that the grass could be put down and the grade would be consistent.

A day later, workers laid down 5,500 square feet of NorthBridge Bermudagrass that transformed Williams-Brice into a soccer stadium. On Tuesday, Flanagan and his crew painted the soccer lines on the pitch, creating the TV-ready surface that Manchester United and Liverpool were guaranteed.

Part of the reason Columbia landed the game, Miller said, was that Flanagan and South Carolina associate AD of facilities Clark Cox “blew them away.”

Manchester United and Liverpool have both sent representatives from nearly every department — suites, tickets, marketing, groundskeeping — out to Columbia twice to check if it was suitable for the game and figuring out details.

The first time Manchester United came out, the grass was dormant. Some of the reps were a little nervous. Head groundsman Joe Pemberton, though, knew the drill.

“He was like, ‘Oh I can already tell this is gonna be a free trip to America for me,’ ” Flanagan said with a grin. “He knew it was handled. … He knows the deal. They use the same type of stuff, the same processes over there. Plus, I’ve been updating him with photos.”

Over the past six months, Flanagan has had to get himself caught up on the intricate rules of soccer. Not necessarily red cards or offside but, rather, is a ball out if it merely touches the sideline or does the ball have to completely cross over (It has to completely cross the line).

“Because that would make an eight-inch difference on the field dimensions,” Flanagan said. “It’s the stuff you don’t think about.”

A pair of Liverpool guys, too, were just in town two weeks ago to put eyes on the sod installation. They saw the corners filled in with NorthBridge Bermudagrass on a consistent grade. They the mow pattern in perfect 18-foot lines to match up with the center line, penalty area and goal area. They saw the painted lines that just barely fit into the confines of Williams-Brice.

And on Saturday, over 76,000 fans will see the same thing.

Some, though, might simply be scared of another non-football event on the Willy-B grass. At the mere mention of Saturday’s soccer game will bring up the events of August 2018, when a Beyonce and Jay-Z concert at Williams-Brice Stadium damaged the field so severely that the entire playing surface had to be replaced … just a week before the Gamecocks home opener.

“(For the concert), they put flooring down,” Flanagan said. “It’s plastic. Real light and has holes in it so water and air can get through. … That flooring is what kills the grass.”

Unlike a Beyonce concert, no plastic flooring will be on the playing surface this week — which means Flanagan has no real concerns about any damage to the grass on Saturday. Heck, he said, a soccer match will probably do less harm to the sod than a football game.

A few days after the match, the same company that installed the sod will take it out. The field has far less paint on it compared to a normal South Carolina game, so the lines from Saturday’s match should be out of the grass in a week.

Then, Flanagan said, he and his crew will shift their minds to football. The Gamecocks kick off their 2024 season Aug. 31.

“And we’ve got three weeks to get it right,” he said.

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