The 2018 football World Cup final will be played on grass designed and laid by a Maryport company.

SIS Pitches, based on the Glasson Industrial Estate, has won the tender to lay the pitch on which one of the world’s great sporting tournaments will be decided in Russia.

And the firm is already negotiating another multi-million pound deal with an English club on the back of its latest success and is recruiting more staff to join the 39 workers it already employs.

An estimated one billion people are expected to tune into the final in Moscow’s historic Luzhniki Stadium.

It will be the first time ever that a World Cup final will not be played on 100 per cent grass.

The natural pitch will be impregnated with more than 150 miles of plastic.

George Mullan, SIS chief executive, said: "This is like a dream for us as a company and a community.

"We have come so far to get this system to the pinnacle of world sport."

The pitch will use something called SISGRASS, which is a reinforced natural turf.

It is softer but has up to five times the playing time of natural grass alone – ensuring it is not so easily ruined mid-game.

Mr Mullan said: "It's been tough up here with the flooding recently, but we never lost a day’s work even when factories just up the road were going under water.

"We had our emergency plan and you just can’t keep Cumbrian people down."

 Work has already begun to transform the Luzhniki Stadium.

A custom-designed, reinforced fibre-sand rootzone will be laid, stitched with yarn and then seeded to be ready by May 2017 in time for the World Cup warm-up competition, the Confederations Cup.

The stadium will then close for a year until the World Cup, where it will also be used in the opening match as well as the final.

SIS Pitches was chosen for the World Cup final ahead of strong competition from Russian and other international firms, having previously demonstrated its pedigree at the Luzhniki Stadium, under difficult conditions.

The company laid the Champions League pitch for the historic all-English 2008 Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea at the stadium.

The stadium will become home to the Russian national team and SIS Pitches has signed a two-year deal to maintain the pitch.