Revolution Stadium Groundbreaking "12-24 months" Part VII

Another baseless claim from the "Kraft, personally, is evil" theorists.

 

KO, Curious about the bridge you live under, is it stone or metal? JK

 

Hanlon's Razor suggests that they were promoted because Kraft is dumb. (But, likely, Jon Kraft)

 

You would think. One of the first things I thought to myself at my very first Revs home game was along those lines: "Why wouldn't you want a stadium as full on a Saturday for the Revs as on Sunday for the Pats?"

I honestly don't know why. Personally I think part of it is his intense personal engagement with the Patriots and the NFL (which makes sense). I just don't think he has room left in his heart for another team. The Revs will never be anything close to that. He leaves it to his "soccer people"- who are well-meaning but largely ineffective. I don't think he really knows why the Revs don't sell. Must be people don't like soccah up heah. Shrug.

 

It's based on 17 years of abject failure, and the apathy exuded by the entire organization, from top to bottom, year in and year out.

I didn't suggest he was evil. So, keep beating that dead horse while I beat mine. ******** Kraft.

 

Rainbows

 

It could be a number of things. It could be that the old format with Gulati as president was actually slowing everything down. When your club president has three other jobs and works 200 miles from where the business is operated, I could see a level headed man saying "maybe that's the problem." A lot of us assume that Gulati had no part in the organization, but what if he actually had to give everything his seal of approval?

Also, I've noticed a marked improvement this season. The percentage of successful player acquisitions this year is on par with the rest of the league for once. Unfortunately, we started off with the worst team in the league. We had 2-3 viable proven starters; Soares, Reis, Alston (kinda) and Feilhaber. If you honestly expected them to add 8-10 solid starters to fill out a playoff quality roster you're nuts. No MLS team has ever done anything close to that.

...Now the non-player side of the business obviously still needs work.

 

Too bad there's an expansion side that seems to have started from scratch, built itself a stadium and signed some decent AND name DPs...

While other 2nd year squads stay in the hunt, constantly looking for impact players..While of course playing in their own stadiums and generally staying relevant in their markets!

 

But they had 11 free players plus twice as much allocation money to work with. Expansion teams have resources available to them that the Revs didn't have this offseason.

Flo (as a sub/backup), Simms, Nguyen, Cardenas have been successes. Sene has been OK. Moreno, Lozano, and Runstrom have been failures. That's a 50-60% non draft acquisition success rate, which compares favorably to the rest of the league. Look at other teams. Generally a little less than half of the non draft acquisitions fail to do their job.

The issue this season was our starting point, a completely empty (as far as talent goes) roster after years of 90% acquisition failure rates.

 

How many of their "free" expansion players are actually playing a role on the team? Look at the players they've brought in via signings, Di Vaio, Nesta, Rivas, Ferrari, and Felipe. That certainly beats the hell out of anything we've done. They haven't been afraid to make moves, making several trades within MLS to help improve their team. The Revs are lazy and would rather stand pat with fringe players like Alston, Tierney, Guy, etc.

Cardenas and Lechner are only successful if you're hoping that your foreign signings will become average MLS bench players. I'm aspiring to more than that. At the end of the day, Lozano and Moreno were our two highest profile offseason signings and they were both major busts. The offseason was a complete failure, even though we found (fell into our laps) great value in Nguyen and Simms.

 

To be honest, I actually like our roster better than theirs. Our roster is also younger and has more potential. Montreal, on the other hand, will be looking to replace their older players within the next year or two as they succumb to countless injuries.

I think Heaps has been horribly out coached a couple games this year. He hasn't deployed his players very well at times. He's young, so I'm not surprised, but its making this team look worse than it really is. But this is WAY off topic.

 

He was looking at moving under the one that was to cross Route 1 and be funded with tax payer money, because you know, the State has an interest in paying for a bridge connecting one piece of a billionaire's land to another.

 

Felipe is extremely young and better than any player we have on our entire team. Nelson Rivas is still only 29 and the only thing that will prevent him from being one of the best CBs in MLS is health issues. For the most part our roster is certainly younger, but what valuable young pieces do we have? I don't think Alston, McCarthy, Soares, Sene, or Guy are quality MLS starters. They're bench guys. I like Nguyen a lot and I hope that Feilhaber can get his act together. Fagundez has loads of potential but he's not close to being a regular for this team. We're young, but we're not that taltented.

As for the old Italians they've brought in, I agree that they're not going to be around longer than two or three years, but they're creating a buzz/interest in the team and getting better results than we are. Those acquisitions also show that Montreal aspires to be a big club and that they're not afraid to spend money, something we've never done.

 

So when the new stadium opens will it be named Edgaras Jankauskas Stadium or Jose Moreno Stadium?

 

Moreno Arena at Jankauskas Park

 

Otis Spunkmeyer

 

Sene? Really? The guys scored 9 times already. Only 7 players in the league have more goals. Thats a quality MLS starter to me.

Anyways, that article that has Revs players openly criticising the turf really has me wondering about if/when we'll get a SSS. Im assuming a SSS would have grass, but being that KIASB, he might want turf so he can hold events on it...

 

I'm still convinced a hybrid surface would be perfect for Gillette. It would provide the natural playing style of real grass with the durability of artificial turf.

That said, I'd prefer and SSS

 

hahahaha Yeah man, the Revs are so progressing, dude. I mean, just look at them. They are on the up and up.

 

I'm sorry but I've seen far too many guys score 10 times or so in a season and still bottom out in the next year or two. I just haven't been impressed with Sene. He's incredibly one footed, his passing is awful, his position is suspect at best (constantly floating to the wings and tracking back too deep into the midfield), etc. I just think this is more flash in the pan than anything else. Sure his nine goals are great, but look at all of the chances he's blown and the errors and give aways he's committed. The fact that he has scored on a bunch of headers when he never has in the past is also alarming. I just feel like we witnessed him get a little lucky on a hot streak, and now he's coming back down to earth.

 

I think so too, and Saturday was a prime example. They knocked us around and our response was to play into their hands by relapsing into hopeless long balls.

I do think Heaps will learn quickly. He's a smart guy, but the learning curve is pretty steep the first year. I don't think any of the other successful former-MLS-player-now-coaches were terribly successful right off the bat either.

Sene has 9 goals in midseason with a lower-level team and a rookie coach with no other consistent scoring threat and he's not a quality MLS starter? At his position you don't have to look good or make a lot of good plays, as long as you score goals (many of which he creates himself).

I think you consistently under-rate Rev players. I agree that Guy and Tierney are utility, bench players, but most of the others would have plenty of eager takers if they were available. When the team plays poorly, the players often look lousy - that doesn't necessarily make them so.