Hey, the Foxboro Revolutions are playing again!

Time to Mo Vaughn

RIP Dernell
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New season is under way.

Scoreless at halftime against Montreal in the first game.

Here's the roster:
https://www.revolutionsoccer.net/players
Hey, Firmino is playing for them now!
Not that one:
https://www.revolutionsoccer.net/players/nicolas-firmino
Mentioned this in the MLS restart thread, but they looked really good in first 45. A lot of chances and carried play.
Is this on TV anywhere? I can't find it on local channel or sports channels on FIOS in the Boston area.
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

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TUDN has it. No english broadcast on TV.
What a failure with absolutely no live sports alternatives right now. I did even check Telemundo. For reference, TUDN is 1539 on FIOS. Also the SAP button does not result in an English broadcast.
 

scottyno

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What a failure with absolutely no live sports alternatives right now. I did even check Telemundo. For reference, TUDN is 1539 on FIOS. Also the SAP button does not result in an English broadcast.
I have it in english, maybe it's only for certain cable providers with the english feed?
 

Senator Donut

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What a failure with absolutely no live sports alternatives right now. I did even check Telemundo. For reference, TUDN is 1539 on FIOS. Also the SAP button does not result in an English broadcast.
I have it in english, maybe it's only for certain cable providers with the english feed?
Oh possible none in my Market even trying SAP lol
Ironically FiOS doesn’t give you SAP English unless you pay for their Spanish package

View: https://twitter.com/verizonsupport/status/711001493348941824
 

TheRealness

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They looked good and carried most of the play. They could have scored a lot more goals, but had issues finishing. Bou himself could have had a Hat trick with some better finishing and execution.

I was impressed. I have not seen the Revs look that structured and dangerous before. Hoping they can elevate their play a bit and finish more as the next two group matches will be tougher to win.
 

Jimy Hendrix

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They looked good and carried most of the play. They could have scored a lot more goals, but had issues finishing. Bou himself could have had a Hat trick with some better finishing and execution.

I was impressed. I have not seen the Revs look that structured and dangerous before. Hoping they can elevate their play a bit and finish more as the next two group matches will be tougher to win.
Arena may only be a quarter as good as he thinks he is, but given the size of his ego that's enough to make him a very good MLS manager and a vastly better one than anyone the Revs have had in a long, long time. Combining that with the fact that he has enough about him to convince the Krafts to actually loosen the purse strings and we have something here.
 

Senator Donut

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MLSSoccer.com’s Charles Boehm pointed out that yesterday was the first time in Revs history that they had three designated players (Gil, Bou, Buska) on the field at the same time.
 

Titans Bastard

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Arena may only be a quarter as good as he thinks he is, but given the size of his ego that's enough to make him a very good MLS manager and a vastly better one than anyone the Revs have had in a long, long time. Combining that with the fact that he has enough about him to convince the Krafts to actually loosen the purse strings and we have something here.
Arena is far and away the best manager the Revs have ever had, and it's not even close. I'm not trying to be Arena's hagiographer here, it's just that the Revs have only ever had seven other permanent managers so there's not even much competition. I mean seriously, the last SEVENTEEN YEARS have been either Steve Nicol, Jay Heaps, or Brad Friedel.
 

lars10

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Arena is far and away the best manager the Revs have ever had, and it's not even close. I'm not trying to be Arena's hagiographer here, it's just that the Revs have only ever had seven other permanent managers so there's not even much competition. I mean seriously, the last SEVENTEEN YEARS have been either Steve Nicol, Jay Heaps, or Brad Friedel.
Bruce Arena is basically the best manager in MLS history, no (5 MLS cups)? However, lumping Nicol into the others is a bit unfair to him I think and is basically based solely on results in the finals.. if they win a few of those his stock goes up, but I guess he just becomes the Marv Levy of MLS? In his stint as manager they lost in the finals four times, conf. finals twice and conf. semi finals twice. Under him the Revs were 1st in the east twice, 2nd in east three times and 3rd twice.. in nine years. His last two years weren't great, but that's a pretty good 9 year run. Basically all of the Revs best years were with him as manager (other than 2013, 2014)... and that's without Landon.
 

Titans Bastard

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Bruce Arena is basically the best manager in MLS history, no (5 MLS cups)? However, lumping Nicol into the others is a bit unfair to him I think and is basically based solely on results in the finals.. if they win a few of those his stock goes up, but I guess he just becomes the Marv Levy of MLS? In his stint as manager they lost in the finals four times, conf. finals twice and conf. semi finals twice. Under him the Revs were 1st in the east twice, 2nd in east three times and 3rd twice.. in nine years. His last two years weren't great, but that's a pretty good 9 year run. Basically all of the Revs best years were with him as manager (other than 2013, 2014)... and that's without Landon.
I think the Revs were good in that era mostly because they had so many good players for the era. Joseph. Dempsey. Twellman. Ralston. Reis. Parkhurst. Noonan. Larentowicz. Nicol was an old-school, English "roll the ball out and play" type of manager. I've heard lots of thinly-veiled references suggesting that he spent a lot of his time golfing. I don't think it's a coincidence that he transitioned to being a mediocre pundit and never coached again.

All three managers suffered under the leadership of Mike Burns, always one of the most notorious GMs in MLS. The Revs were known for being awful at foreign player scouting and recruitment. I think this is changing a bit with Arena in charge, but New England has long been THE place in MLS where players don't want to go.

I think the success of the Revs in the 2000s and the suckage of the 2010s boils down to being both good & lucky with the draft when it really mattered, then completely failing to adjust.

In the 2000s, the draft was huge. The league didn't/couldn't attract a lot of great foreign players and there were no academies, so the draft was where you got top talent. Plus, with only 10-14 teams, there weren't as many teams competing for talents in the draft. Then what happened was that the draft got worse — more young talents bypassed it by signing abroad or by joining MLS academies, with 20+ teams you just didn't have as many good picks, and with increased investment in foreign players it became that much less likely that college players would become "stars" in the league.

Here's the Revs' drafting record. Player (round)

2002: Twellman (1), Joseph (2) (!!!!!!!) [Also picked up Steve Ralston in the allocation draft that followed the contraction of Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny, and also Alex Pineda Chacon who was traded for Matt Reis a year later]
2003: Noonan (1)
2004: Dempsey (1), Dorman (6)
2005: Parkhurst (1), Riley (2), Larentowicz (8)

For MLS of that era, this is simply E-P-I-C. And also totally unsustainable. The Revs got basically nothing in '06 and '07, Chris Tierney in '08, Kevin Alston in '09, not much in '10 (Sinovic, but they cut him), A.J. Soares in '11. The guys I mention here are useful, but they are nothing like the absolute foundational, building block stars that Twellman, Joseph, Dempsey, and Parkhurst were.
 

lars10

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I think the Revs were good in that era mostly because they had so many good players for the era. Joseph. Dempsey. Twellman. Ralston. Reis. Parkhurst. Noonan. Larentowicz. Nicol was an old-school, English "roll the ball out and play" type of manager. I've heard lots of thinly-veiled references suggesting that he spent a lot of his time golfing. I don't think it's a coincidence that he transitioned to being a mediocre pundit and never coached again.

All three managers suffered under the leadership of Mike Burns, always one of the most notorious GMs in MLS. The Revs were known for being awful at foreign player scouting and recruitment. I think this is changing a bit with Arena in charge, but New England has long been THE place in MLS where players don't want to go.

I think the success of the Revs in the 2000s and the suckage of the 2010s boils down to being both good & lucky with the draft when it really mattered, then completely failing to adjust.

In the 2000s, the draft was huge. The league didn't/couldn't attract a lot of great foreign players and there were no academies, so the draft was where you got top talent. Plus, with only 10-14 teams, there weren't as many teams competing for talents in the draft. Then what happened was that the draft got worse — more young talents bypassed it by signing abroad or by joining MLS academies, with 20+ teams you just didn't have as many good picks, and with increased investment in foreign players it became that much less likely that college players would become "stars" in the league.

Here's the Revs' drafting record. Player (round)

2002: Twellman (1), Joseph (2) (!!!!!!!) [Also picked up Steve Ralston in the allocation draft that followed the contraction of Miami Fusion and Tampa Bay Mutiny, and also Alex Pineda Chacon who was traded for Matt Reis a year later]
2003: Noonan (1)
2004: Dempsey (1), Dorman (6)
2005: Parkhurst (1), Riley (2), Larentowicz (8)

For MLS of that era, this is simply E-P-I-C. And also totally unsustainable. The Revs got basically nothing in '06 and '07, Chris Tierney in '08, Kevin Alston in '09, not much in '10 (Sinovic, but they cut him), A.J. Soares in '11. The guys I mention here are useful, but they are nothing like the absolute foundational, building block stars that Twellman, Joseph, Dempsey, and Parkhurst were.
I'll defer to your obviously superior knowledge on the subject but two things:
1. Any good manager is going to have good players. Lots of bad managers have also had bad players... to simply put it down to their amount of talent seems a bit unfair.
2. I also really like Noonan and almost feel like he was as dangerous as Twellman for a few years until he got injured? as i seem to recall?
The two of them as strike partners was lethal for a bit.

Somehow I'd completely forgotten about Dempsey on the Revs.

I recall the story about why they drafted Parkhurst... I don't recall who told it.. but when they went to tryouts the fields were in bad shape and it had been raining and was a downpour. There were puddles all over the field and the chose Parkhurst because he found a way to lift the ball consistently to avoid just trying to plow through the rain like everyone else... they took it as a sign of his intelligence.
 

Titans Bastard

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I'll defer to your obviously superior knowledge on the subject but two things:
1. Any good manager is going to have good players. Lots of bad managers have also had bad players... to simply put it down to their amount of talent seems a bit unfair.
2. I also really like Noonan and almost feel like he was as dangerous as Twellman for a few years until he got injured? as i seem to recall?
The two of them as strike partners was lethal for a bit.

Somehow I'd completely forgotten about Dempsey on the Revs.

I recall the story about why they drafted Parkhurst... I don't recall who told it.. but when they went to tryouts the fields were in bad shape and it had been raining and was a downpour. There were puddles all over the field and the chose Parkhurst because he found a way to lift the ball consistently to avoid just trying to plow through the rain like everyone else... they took it as a sign of his intelligence.
Okay, allow me to backpedal or contextualize a bit:

It's also fair to acknowledge that the paradigm of what a manager is has changed over time. It used to be far more common, particularly in the British Isles, to have managers who mostly focused on motivation and man management, were rudimentary tacticians, and basically delegated a lot of the on-field nuance to the players. Think Harry Redknapp. (In not-unrelated news, the Brits also fell behind continental rivals during this period.) Nicol, a Scot who played in the 1980s and early 1990s, is very much a product of this era. Now, top managers are known for being extremely detailed tacticians.

Maybe I'm being harsh by judging Nicol by the standards of 2020, but nonetheless this transition didn't happen yesterday and both the growing sophistication of MLS and global changes in expectations of managers certainly passed him by well before his tenure with the Revs came to an end in 2011.

IMO, he's not the only manager who had some success in MLS only to be viewed as a well-below-average manager in the league by the end. I'd place Frank Yallop in the same bucket.
 

The Gray Eagle

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DC United's game against Toronto was postponed due to the virus. That means the Revolutions will be back in action Friday against DC. A win would put them in great position.
 

Titans Bastard

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Revs up 1-0 via a Buksa header off a deflected shot.

Now some nice hold up play from Buksa puts Penilla in behind, but Hamid makes a nice save.
 

Titans Bastard

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The Revs play Toronto tomorrow morning at 9 and could take the group with a win. Even if they lose and DC beats Montreal, the Revs are likely to go through as a 3rd place finisher. Only two of the six 3rd place finishers get eliminated, and the Revs already have more points than NYCFC, who have played all three games.
 

Titans Bastard

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Major squad rotation from Arena this morning. Kessler and Farrell are in at CB for Delamea and Mancienne (not necessarily a bad thing, IMO), Jones is in at LB for Büttner, Buchanan and Fagundez are in on the wings for Bou and Penilla, and Bunbury comes in as a second forward for the injured Gil, making it a 4-4-2 rather than a 4-2-3-1.

The Revs will have to withstand the red-hot Ayo Akinola, he of five-goals-in-the-last-two-games fame.


EDIT: Looks like it might be a 4-2-3-1 after all with Fagundez in the middle and Bunbury on the right.
 
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Titans Bastard

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0-0 draw, which isn't terrible for a rotated squad. I thought the second half was a bit better. I love Matt Turner.

The Revs are on five points now and in second place. If D.C. wins, the Revs will be bumped to 3rd on GD, but with five points they will definitely be one of the 3rd place teams that go through.
 

Pesky Pole

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0-0 draw, which isn't terrible for a rotated squad. I thought the second half was a bit better. I love Matt Turner.

The Revs are on five points now and in second place. If D.C. wins, the Revs will be bumped to 3rd on GD, but with five points they will definitely be one of the 3rd place teams that go through.
If DC ties or loses, you get the Union. Otherwise, the Revs are through but it's either Orlando or San Jose I think.
 

Senator Donut

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With advancement almost guaranteed before the match, picking up a point against a top eastern team was a good result, especially with their best player out of the 23 and their second best player out of the XI. The Revs now stand just above the red line in seventh, although that's likely to change after DC/Montreal.

The Revs need Matt Polster ASAP. The Caldwell/Rowe combination in the defensive midfield is very limited when playing the better teams in MLS. Zahibo seemed to calm things down in the second half.

EDIT: I should also add this was Diego's best match in a long time. He took on a lot of the attacking responsibilities with Gil/Bou/Penilla on the bench to start.
 
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tmracht

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DC lost, so the Revs are set to play Philly.
So very MLS that DC can come back down a man and down two goals with <10 mins left against TFC. Can get a draw thanks to an absolutely dumb back pass versus the Revs, then slink out of the tournament against Montreal.
 

Senator Donut

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Bruce says Gil is "unlikely" to play against the Union. I'm already hoping for a scoreless 90 minutes then penalties.
 

Pesky Pole

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Since I'm a Union fan, I hope you don't mind a quick write up on what to expect from your opponent on Saturday night.

Formation - the Union typically play two forwards on top of a diamond midfield with 4 at the back.

Strikers - The two strikers are Kacper Przybylko and Sergio Santos. Przybylko was a breakout player last season for the Union scoring 15 goals. His foot injury at the end of the season corresponded closely with the Union’s playoff fade. He’s big and rangy with deceiving speed and clinical finishing ability. Santos on the other hand is not a popular figure with Union fans. He came with expectations last year and was pretty average - mostly as a sub with speed who came on to take advantage of tired legs. He’s fast, strong and has the worst first touch in the history of soccer. He also gets called for a ton of fouls. He’s basically a destitute man’s Jozy Altidore.

Midfield - The midfield is solid and as the diamond requires, they interchange very well. Monteiro is probably the unsung hero in midfield - he played more defensive midfield last year but the intent has been to move him up field this year. He’s the one Union player who can hurt you from outside the box. Bedoya is Bedoya - energizer bunny who will have two or three great plays a game that should lead to a scoring opportunity. Other than that, he’ll just run his legs off. Aaronson is the guy everyone wants to get excited about and it is warranted. He’s a homegrown kid who seems to be figuring it all out. His big step this year has been knowing where to find space. He’s still very small in stature but he’s not afraid of throwing a shoulder or dribbling through traffic. He seems to be making a step that will probably see him land in Germany as soon as next season. The fourth midfielder is likely “El Brujo” Martinez. It’s been a limited look so far but he’s surely the guy most likely to get a red card or permanently injure someone - and in fact, he already got a red awarded by the disciplinary committee after the second game review. I’d like to tell you more but who knows at this point. He'll either figure it out or cost the Union two games playing down a man.

Defense - The defense is interesting. They play 4 at the back and bomb their wingbacks forward. Kai Wagner was excellent last year but has been nursing an injury this year. Ray Gaddis is underrated in how solid he is - nothing special but solid and he's played over 200 games for the Union. He's also the guy most likely to come sit with your kid before the game and make his day (as he has twice). In the middle are Jack Elliot and Mark McKenzie. McKenzie is a homegrown US U-20 guy who has played very well for the Union (actually overshadowing the higher rated young guy Aaron Trusty who was traded away). Elliott was a shrewd find from England and provides some length and speed at center back.

Goalie - Andre Blake is our goalie and he is one of the best shot stoppers in the league. He still drives you insane by being out of position. The best shot to beat Blake is always on a rebound and he gives up a ton of rebounds with his style.

They are a team on the rise for sure but they haven't played a solid 90 minutes yet this season. If they can find a second striker and stabilize their fourth midfielder, they can be dangerous in the league this year.
 

tmracht

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Since I'm a Union fan, I hope you don't mind a quick write up on what to expect from your opponent on Saturday night.
Thanks for the breakdown really well done n

1030PM and Gil unlikely. Not my favorite way to face the #DOOP soccer team of somewhere near Philadelphia.
 

Jimy Hendrix

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Sure seems like it would’ve made more sense to schedule west coast teams for west coast friendly times and east coast teams for east coast friendly times.
 

Titans Bastard

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The Revs are looking a bit more dangerous in the second half, but still haven't generated any rock-solid chances.
 

Titans Bastard

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Ugh, and Philly scores. Bou with a bad giveaway at midfield and the Union capitalize. Twellman blamed Bye's recognition, but I thought I saw Delamea hanging a bit too deep off the defensive line keeping a few Philly attackers onside.
 

Titans Bastard

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1-0 FT.

Disappointing result in a close match where neither team clearly outplayed the other. The next match (vs. KC or VAN) was very winnable, so it sucks to lose at this juncture. OTOH, it's hard to argue that the Revs are a top 8 team in MLS, especially with Carles Gil out injured.