Probably Not the Best Idea Ever

I saw my first Vancouver Whitecaps game last night at the new temporary facility at Empire Field.

The Caps played a 'friendly' against Manchester City and lost 2-1. Although many in the hometown media will say that the Caps played really well and took it to the FA Cup Champions in the first half, we're going to have to agree to disagree on that one. The Caps scored first and took that lead into the half, but it was plain to see that the bottom feeding MLS expansion team was way out of their league. City is class, Vancouver is a border line men's league team.

Because this was a friendly and just a pit stop for City on a larger North American tour, I'm going to stop talking about the game now. What I really want to discuss is the field and how the Caps handled the rain situation.

The Whitecaps play on artificial turf in order to have an international match they needed to install grass. The grass field was laid (over top of the turf) last week in advance of their match against Real Salt Lake. This is Vancouver and it has been raining here since 2010, did they not anticipate possible issues with the pitch? How could they not have forward thinking on this one? Was the plan the whole time to cancel the Salt Lake game in favour of having a marginally playable field for the City match? There's no way MLS would have been cool with that. For anyone who grew up playing soccer in Vancouver it is a joke that a so called professional soccer game would be cancelled. But, while we're cancelling games, the one last night should have got the boot as well.

30 minutes into the first half large chunks of turf were already flying out of the ground. Players were stomping down divets themselves. These are players (on the City side) that make millions of Pounds a year and are used to playing in front of 100,000+ people and they are filling holes in the turf...Please. If this game cost any player his career because of the field conditions it wasn't worth it.

(FYI last night's attendance? Just over 48,000. Not a sellout by the looks of it, but it could have been on paper)

At half time the field crew came out with sod and filled in holes and during the second half, the ball wasn't even rolling or bouncing...and the players were sliding all over the place.

The idea was a good one. Get a major international team here to promote a fledgling MLS franchise. The execution (with props to the field crew) was horrendous and made Vancouver look like the Mickey Mouse soccer town it is.

September can't come soon enough. I'm starting to think a $400 million roof was worth it.

j