Toronto FC is heading indoors to beat the deep freeze.
The Major League Soccer franchise will play the first leg of its CONCACAF Champions League quarter-final against the LA Galaxy at Rogers Centre, sportsnet.ca learned Wednesday morning.
The Reds made it official later in the day when they announced they will host the Galaxy on March 7 under the retractable roof at Rogers Centre, home of Major League Baseball’s Blue Jays and the Argonauts of the Canadian Football league.
TFC’s regular home, BMO Field, is an outdoor stadium and unprotected from the elements, making it susceptible to being snowed in, and pipes inside the facility becoming frozen and possibly bursting.
The club looked into winterizing BMO Field but discovered it wouldn’t be ready in time for the March game. Hence the decision to go to Rogers Centre.
“A lot of thought went into selecting the home site for this very important match,” Paul Beirne, TFC senior director of business operations, said in a news release.
“While we would have loved to host our quarterfinal match at (BMO Field), ultimately the decision came down to our ability to deliver a safe and enjoyable event in a venue that could withstand the unpredictability of March’s weather conditions.
We felt that BMO Field’s infrastructure in its present state combined with the exposure to the winter conditions would not deliver on this experience.”
Unlike BMO Field, Rogers Centre has artificial turf, and club officials previously said they would consider importing a grass field if the game was to be played indoors. But the match against LA will be played on artificial turf.
The second leg of the home-and-away series is March 14 at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.
The Reds qualified for the quarter-finals of the continental competition for the first time in franchise history after beating out fellow MLS side FC Dallas for second place in their round-robin group in October.
TFC management began exploring into the option of playing at Rogers Centre shortly after the club advanced to the quarter-finals.
When they were competing in the USL-1, one tier below MLS, the Montreal Impact faced a similar predicament. Eventually, they decided to move indoors to Olympic Stadium and drew a crowd of 55,571 spectators for the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions League quarter-final against Mexican club Santos Laguna in February of 2009.
Paul Mariner, TFC’s director of player development, recently told sportsnet.ca that he hoped the game would take place at BMO Field so that the club could use the cold weather to its advantage.
“Personally, I’m a BMO Field guy. I think you use every single advantage you have. We’re familiar with BMO as a group, we know it’s going to be cold. But if we decided to go to Rogers Centre, Rogers it is,” Mariner said.
Ticket details for the match between Toronto FC and LA Galaxy will be announced in early January.
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