Canadian Soccer Association officials have deemed the surface at BMO Field unplayable, and the second leg of the Canadian championship between Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps has been rescheduled for July 2.
Vancouver held a 1-0 lead in the 60th minute of Wednesday night's second leg, but torrential downpours and repeated lightning forced the game to be abandoned. Per CSA rules, the game must be replayed in its entirety, so Vancouver's lead in the game (and 2-1 on aggregate) is wiped off the board, and the teams will restart from 0-0 (1-1 aggregate). Eric Hassli had scored to put the Whitecaps ahead.
The rescheduled date makes sense from a logistical standpoint. Instead of the teams having to play back-to-back days during the week and then play their league games on Saturday, they'll stay on the playing schedule for which they prepared. Plus, Vancouver will already be in Toronto for a league game on June 29 and can remain there through the rescheduled final.
What do you think of this development? Do you think it's fair that the game has to be replayed from the start instead of the teams just picking up from where they left off?
Share your thoughts below.
The Ref made the Right call JZ. I agree with the decision to call off the game. I think the fans who were there were not getting their money worth. That alone is worth canceling the game for.
After all that is why pro sports exist – purely for entainment. The powers that be have do the what is best for their audience. So they made the right call. At half time they should have called the game. They waited to long to call the game. The game is not meant to be played in cold hurricane.
All I am saying is call the ace of hearts the ace of hearts.
Please accept that I have no real vested interest or entrenched rhetorical position in this debate when I suggest that very few soccer stadiums (and quite possibly none) in the world feature pitches that would have remained playable under the conditions in Toronto the other night. Competition rules, the probability of one being hit by lightning and everything else aside, the game was being played during a genuinely extremely heavy, violent thunderstorm. There’s an obvious difference between this type of rainfall and the persistent, habitual rain familiar to the UK and the Pacific Northwest. Or the rain familiar to Toronto, for that matter. By all accounts BMO Field has an expensive, properly installed and drainable pitch, but there are always going to be limits, surely.
The (relative) unplayability of the pitch isn’t an indictment of the team, its facilities, the league in which it plays, or Canada and its attitude toward the sport. It was just raining very unusually, incredibly hard that night. It’s nobody’s fault.
Obviously Vancouver is very unfortunate and Toronto commensurately fortunate now that the game must be replayed. The decision made was reasonable, however, considering the conditions, almost certainly taken in good faith, and reflective of the competition’s agreed upon rules, which themselves are reflective of FIFA’s laws. There’s no insidious conspiracy or gross incompetency going on here.
It’s fine. Honestly.
The chances of getting hit by lighting in the first place is a lot less then winning the lottery. I am just clarifying. So the probability of get hit AND DYING from a lighting strike is so low that it almost does not exist as a likely occurrence.
If the stadium is made of metal than it most likely wont hit you- but the metal stadium.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A RISK FREE LIFE. NO MATTER WHAT WE DO THE RISK OF DYING IS ALWAYS THERE. EVEN BREATHING ( VIRUS’ ARE AIRBORNE).
LIFE IS ALL ABOUT HOW YOU HANDLE THE RISK. EVERYBODY TAKES WHATS CALLED ” CACULATED RISKS”. WE ALL DO IT EVERY DAY OF ALL LIVES.
This post is idiotic. the chance of dying from a lightning strike is about 20%, not 1 in 347 million. And this is a stadium basically made of metal.
1.Let me tell you about lighting. The chances that you will get hit are very rare. Driving home you have a lot greater chance to getting hit by a car than by being struck by lighting.
2. If on a very rare occasion that lighting my hit you most likely it will just go right through your body and out the other side with no damage to you at all.
3. Some one dying from lighting is a lot more rare than somebody winning the lottery for 347 million Dollars.
MY three friends and I were struck by lighting and all it did was go through our bodies and out the other side. There was no damage at all. We just had little holes in our clothing from the places where the lighting entered and exited. We all saw and doctor within the hour and we went back to what we were doing when we got struck. The Doctors said we were fine.
SO PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK. IT IS ONLY LIGHTING. AS A SAID YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO DIE SLIPPING ON YOUR BATHROOM FLOOR THAN GETTING HIT BY LIGHTING, MUST LESS GETTING DEAD FROM IT.
YOU PEOPLE ARE SO SOFT THESE DAYS. It is almost laughable.
that is why you get the Rubber Umbrella- lighting deos not strike rubber.
The ignorance here on all things Canadian soccer astounds me sometimes.
1) There were thunderstorms and lightning touching down less than a half mile away from the stadium in the second half. And it was the hardest most torrential rain I have ever seen in this city.
2) TFC and Vancouver, along with Edmonton and Montreal, freely agreed to the rules of the tournament before it started, and those rules explicitly stated that if a game was called before 75 minutes then there would be a replay of the whole match over again as expeditiously as possible. The plan was 11:00 AM today but the weather was too poor still and the pitch waterlogged too much so both teams decided on a July 2 rescheduling.
3) Due respect to the official but the game should have been called at the half based on the conditions.
4) With due respect to the US Open Cup, the Canadian Championship has drawn roughly 70,000 supporters for four games played (with one now cancelled of course). Each game was broadcast nationally across the country. With due respect the USOC would I think kill for that kind of exposure.
5) Canadian MLS sides cannot get into CONCACAF through MLS. There are currently four D1 and D2 clubs in Canada and this tournament is the best way to choose our representative for the Champions League.
6) Umbrellas are not allowed inside BMO Field. They block the view of other patrons dummy!
“Oh look, the Canadians have a championship for their three pro teams. That’s so cute!”
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Ironic how US soccer fans get pissed off and defensive when eurosnobs act condescending, toward MLS yet they seem to have no problem being smug d bags themselves.
Exactly. There was still lightning in the area.
People keep mixing up the facts.
So get some earplugs and a RUBBER UMBRELLA. Cheers!!
“I also think it’s preposterous that winning a three-team tournament earns a bid in the Champions’ League.”
Get your facts straight. It’s a 4 team tournament now. And regardless of your opinion, CONCACAF awards spots based on country, not league. US based teams qualify via the USOC and MLS. Canadian based teams qualify via the NCC. Unfortunately the CSA is crooked and can’t even get things right to put a soccer program together, so Canada only has 4 teams. Not to mention more people find baseball amusing for some strange reason.
“I could see replaying it in it’s enirety if the game hadn’t reached halftime but when it’s 2/3 over, it seems very unfair to take away the work of the team that had forged an advantage.”
I’m assuming you didn’t watch the game. The second half shouldn’t have been played AT ALL. The entire half TFC was defending was drenched in water. The ball wouldn’t even move. The players took two steps with the ball and then the ball just completely stopped moving. The 6-yard boxes were completely drenched in water. No way anyone should have been playing in those onditions.
It wasn’t stopped just becase of the rain…There was thunder and lighting as well!!!
They probably invest more money into it, hence why some MLS teams have plastic pitches. I think they use some kind of heat/growing lamps in the UK and Ireland.
QWEST Field has by far the worst plastic pitch in MLS and probably the worst for any major sports team in the US, period.
I read an article a couple months back where they were thinking about replacing it. It doesn’t even the highest FIFA rating for a artificial turf field, whereas JELD-WEN, Gillette and Empire Fields do.
I’d say it’s working out for them pretty well. It caused the abandonment of a game they were losing;)
It is a 5 million dollar pitch with drainage and heating. I think, according to the friend I was sitting with a from Ireland, it doesn’t rain that hard and long *shrug* over there. The field held up for the first half, but the rain didn’t stop, or really slow down, it just kept pouring down.
they have been playing soccer a bit longer over there and take it a bit more serious than here. Fields are constructed with PROPER drainage systems, because they actually care about the sport… in Canadia (yeah i said it) it seems to be a side note
Eloquent and well argued. I tip my hat to you, sir. Though to be fair, the Vancouver fans may care about Mr. Thordason and I didn’t realize his intelligence was up for debate. If it were, you’d take first place no doubt in the “he’s an idiot” division.
Oh for the people that are upset for Vancouver about the rule. It is not a rule native to Canada only, the rule is in place for all fifa competitions.
If the game had reached 75 min (the real 2/3 of the game ) the game would have been called for Vancouver, but because it did not reach that breaking point.
That is the problem. His IQ. He does not know how to run a team at this level. As far as the protest, that is not his job.
Someone enlighten me. How do natural grass pitches in England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. stay in playable condition after months of rain?
He’s the coach. It’s his job to protest, regardless of your opinion of his IQ.
Oh look, the Canadians have a championship for their three pro teams. That’s so cute!
I think Vancouver got the major shaft here. Why wasn’t the game called at 1-0? Why is Vancouver punished, especially because the venue of the other team wasn’t sufficient to get the game played?
I could see replaying it in it’s enirety if the game hadn’t reached halftime but when it’s 2/3 over, it seems very unfair to take away the work of the team that had forged an advantage.
That said, this mini-controversy has at least made me notice the competition. Without this, I likely wouldn’t care.
I also think it’s preposterous that winning a three-team tournament earns a bid in the Champions’ League.
Suddenly the other side of the arguement pops up.
How’s that grass working out for you Toronto ?
Rained all the way through the last two games in 5 days and the playing surface is perfect in Seattle ( Portland too probably )….well if you can get used to the fact that it is plastic 😉
Who cares about him? He is a idiot.
It’s seems very unfair. If I were Teitur Thordarson, I would protest the sh!t out of that decision.
its pretty unfair in my opinion. comaring it to other sports, baseball would either call it a Vancouver win since more than 5/9 of the game had been played, or they would have picked up the game in the sameexact scenario it had ended. seems unfair to Vancouver