Winterization? Yeah, perhaps. Seems a bit made up.
I gave up long ago caring if YS has a legal sized field, but if it isn’t legal MLS is able to turn a blind eye to it being a single entity league; other teams have cried foul, but in the end the league could mandate is as league compliant. Concacaf is a different story. There wouldn’t be any exemptions from them for a narrow pitch, and YS “not being available” is an easier sell to maintain the charade than being available and not meeting the standards. Our FO gets zero rope on matters any longer, they may be saying next round they’re submitting YS/Citi, but as far as I’m concerned that’s all lip service until the venue is announced; they’ve twisted the truth so many times in the past that I expect them to lie to us while only submitting RBA to Concacaf for the next round.
All I want is for them to own it and be up front about it. They failed this time to get ahead of the story. There’s zero reason to believe they’ll do better next time.
Truth is we don't know exactly what happened or what the reasons are. We can only speculate. There could be any number of reasons the venues could be denied that have nothing to do with the field dimensions. St John's obviously didn't get denied for field dimensions.
If ys or citi were denied due to field dimensions, I can see the club wanting to hide that. But truth is there are so many other venue regulations that were probably not or could not be satisfied before even taking into consideration the field dimensions.
Anyway, the reality is we don't know and we have to accept it and support our team. There's light at the end of this very long, very dark tunnel. But we'll get there guys.. and hopefully we will already have some shiny silverware to decorate with when we do.