Quote Originally Posted by ensco View Post
I posted this months ago when the schedule was first released (I did a 30 second search and couldn’t find the post)… Messi was never going to Vancouver.

This is a period of very heavy schedule congestion, it's plastic, it is a brutally long flight (with both the last and next game in Miami - they aren’t on a road trip), he needs to find load management games to skip generally, and Messi is focused on Copa, and can’t afford to take stupid risks right now.

I will repeat what I said then too - Messi may well skip the game here in Toronto in October also. He may well be “rested” for the playoffs, and it gets cold in October at night here. (I have a bit less certainty on this - him skipping Vancouver was a lock.)
The Toronto game will definitely be Shield driven. If they've already locked it up he won't be here.

What we do have going for us is a stellar pitch.

I'm pipe dreaming but how cool would it be if this match was for the shield?