French ground staff are rapidly trying to relay the controversial pitch at Lille’s Pierre Mauroy stadium with Dutch turf in time for Germany’s last 16 clash with Slovakia at Euro 2016 tomorrow.

Some of the pitches at the tournament have been criticised by players and fans alike.

The Lille surface, which suffered torrential rain before its first game betweeen Germany and Ukraine, has been singled out as being particularly bad.

Workers are putting in long hours at the ground to replace the turf with grass grown in the Netherlands.

“The extremely difficult weather conditions in the past few weeks (rain, humidity, lack of sunshine) have caused irreversible damage to the surface at the stadium, in spite of a series of measures put in place to allow the playing surface to recover,” UEFA said in a statement.

Two games at the stadium have been played with the roof closed to protect it from rain, and neither Ireland nor Italy were allowed to train on the pitch the day before their group game on Wednesday to give it maximum time to recover.

Since then rolls of turf have been carefully laid out and packed down before staff with buzzing petrol lawnmowers gave it a meticulous going-over with huge fans for air circulation lined up on one side of the pitch.

With players losing their footing regularly during some Euro 2016 games and the efforts of ground staff armed with pitchforks at half time proving ineffective, UEFA has blamed bad weather for the problems.