Messi could sell out BC Place on his own but will he ever get the chance?

Lionel Messi has the ability to sell out BC Place and its 54,500 seats on his own, but will he ever get the chance?

The 35-year-old Argentinian is a living legend and made headlines globally this morning when news filtered out that he will play with Inter Miami CF of MLS, which is of course the same league that the Vancouver Whitecaps play in.

Throughout the years, there have been some top players that have scoffed at playing on BC Place’s artificial turf field, which is not a surface used in any top league outside North America. Thierry Henry famously skipped out on Vancouver due to the BC Place turf, when he suited up for New York Red Bulls from 2010 to 2014.

Many more star players have played at BC Place though, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wayne Rooney, Andrea Pirlo, and David Beckham.

We don’t know if Messi will balk at playing on turf, but there is something more concerning that might prevent him from ever stepping foot in BC Place: the MLS schedule.

Major League Soccer has undergone rapid expansion since Vancouver first entered the league in 2011, with the addition of 12 new franchises since then. Now with 29 teams, MLS teams play an increasingly unbalanced 34-game regular season schedule, with few matches against clubs from the opposing conference.

If Messi had landed with a Western Conference club, his team would be guaranteed to visit Vancouver once per season. But because Miami is in the East, there’s a chance he won’t visit Vancouver at all next season or even the year after that.

Or the year after that.

Just three of the 15 Eastern Conference teams visit Vancouver per season under the current MLS schedule format, with one of those being a Canadian rival in Toronto FC or CF Montreal.

The good news is that Vancouver has never played Miami since the club entered MLS in 2020, so they’re due for a match. Messi’s new team is one of seven teams that haven’t played a match in Vancouver in each of the last two seasons.

You can bet the Whitecaps are hoping to see an Inter-Miami match at BC Place on their schedule in 2024.

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