Not sure what is up with Caldwell. During preseason he looked less than stellar. Two games into the season he really has not played any better. Wonder what the deal is there. Just in bad form?
He's about to lose his starting job once the Colombian guy comes to town and pairs with Zahibo. He knows it too
It was a pretty nice day if you performed some basic layering. Mind you, it's a lot warmer in the Fort with everyone standing.
I thought Teal did a good job with his hold up play and in opening holes for others. Still can't shoot, but maybe Diego, Penilla and Rowe score more thanks to him. Might be interesting to see if he can operate underneath of Nemeth, but that means not playing a double pivot.
Good point, but it begs the question, if Teal is the hold up, where does Agudelo fit? He's a hold up who can actually score. Interesting that Agudelo hasn't started over Teal.
Untested goalkeeper, makeshift backline hold up for New England Revolution March 13, 2018, 9:28AM EDT Jonathan Sigal
Teal has zero touch. sort of reminds me of Zardes. Pretty fast and will occasionally score but both have feet in cemented on concrete when it comes to a soft touch and have the technical skills of an 11 year old
People keep bringing that up. The Revs, like the Pats and many other teams, have conditioning tests that players need to pass to move on and be considered fit enough for game action. It's up to Nguyen to get to that level and prove it. I find it rather incredible that people think that Friedel doesn't want Nguyen to play (he was against trading him, after all).
It's been a month. A professional athlete is more than capable of getting into shape in that period of time. To me, it's Lee's decision to not get in shape which is precipitating Friedel's decision to not give him minutes. If Nguyen won't put in the effort, why keep him around the team? What kind of a message does that send? Friedel has repeatedly said he doesn't care what a player did in the past and that it's a clean slate. Screw Nguyen. He deserves to be booed. The revs are better off finding guys that will put in the work and want to be here.
He's been back for a month. If he isn't in good enough shape to even come off the bench, then Brad needs to fire his trainer. Nguyen said he was going to be "professional". And I'd think he'd want to be in shape for when he gets traded. So either he lied AND doesn't care about his next job, or Friedel is holding him out for another reason.
Looks outside. You think? I always chuckle whenever I hear people insists MLS has to go to a August-May calendar. Clearly they haven't been here in the dead of winter. March and April are bad enough as it is. Yet we did luck out on Saturday.
I was away in Puerto Rico, so I missed the opener but I'm impressed that we drew 13K in March. I'm looking forward to the 24th, because I missed Crapids, but two games in March? That's just throwing away potential revenue/home crowd support. Even April is pretty iffy.
If only this franchise had the ambition to put every resource it possibly could into its operations, on field and off, so that it drew decent crowds to every single game. They have 17 home regular season games, and it is disgraceful that they don't get at least 20,000 to every single game. EVEN IN FOXBORO they should have figured out how to do that by now. The average should be pushed up to 23K-25K-plus by the big crowds, not pushed up from 13K-15K by the big crowds.
We haven't gotten really big crowds (like some of the old double-headers) in quite some time. What we do have is a pretty respectable ~20K average the last two seasons (with a bad team on the field). I've been a season-ticketholder from the day this team was born - there are times of the year when fans come out and times they don't. March, no. April, not too much. They've grown the season ticket base, so the attendance figures are much more consistent than they used to be - we have almost no < 5-digit attendance figures anymore and the lowest games are usually those with the worst weather, when week of game sales don't add much to the season-ticket numbers.
How many season ticket holders are there? I remember someone had calculated it about 7,000 or so a couple of years ago....
I have also been a season ticket holder since the beginning, we put our deposit down in 94 when the league was supposed to start in 95. This is excuse-making at its finest. A 19/20K average doesn't impress me when still so many of their games are 16K and under. 16K and under feels like jack squat in that stadium. At least if they had most of the lower bowl filled at every game, the stadium wouldn't feel quite so empty. They have never done enough to try and make the soccer fan base in New England less apathetic. I can't even count the number of times that soccer people that I know have talked crap about the Revs, what a garbage organization it is, and hope they'll never support it. Some of that is Euro snobbery, but some of it is spot on. Run the trains to every game and promote the hell out of it. Have a marquee star high-profile name player on the team every single year. Spend money on marketing and promotions. GIVE THE SOCCER FAN POPULATION IN THE REGION A REASON TO COME TO A GAME IN MARCH. It was slightly cold on Saturday. Yes, there is the threat of snow in March (as the ground will currently attest). There is the threat of snow and cold/bad weather late in the season, yet somehow they can get large crowds then but not in the start of the year. They do not do enough to put a winning product on the field nor do they do enough to try and be a leading force in this league in any facet of their operations...period (with the one possible exception that they've always managed to get their games on TV). They never have.
Also a season ticket holder from the beginning, and while this isn't the right thread, just wanted to add another frustration. They seem so slow on figuring out things that might work. Finally, they get the electronic ad boards. But only put them on the TV side of the field. It just reeks of cheap.
I believe most stadiums only do electronic ad boards on the TV side... they are for TV ad revenue, not in-stadium fans.
They used to have games with ~8K fans, so mid-teens for some of the lower-attended games is not bad at all IMO. Could they do more to promote? Undoubtedly. The train idea is not going to fly, and it's not something that the Krafts have the ability to do. But, they could run buses - start with 1 bus, to/from Boston and live with it being mostly empty, until it becomes utilized. Then add a 2nd and go from there. Have the community know that there will *always* be a bus leaving from Boston - buy a ticket/reserve a seat early to guarantee a spot. It would grow over time. You want more sign boards? It's just more distraction (there's already flashing ads all over the stadium). It's going to keep me on the side behind the benches.
First of all, March is much worse than October, or even early November. March is wet and cold. October might be chilly, but often it's beautiful. Besides that, the region has always been more attuned to soccer in the fall - that's never wavered. And, it's always been the prediction of the weather more than the actual weather that makes the difference. A bad (or iffy) forecast early in the week is the death knell.
If you're going to do it, do it right. I'll have to go back and review this, but I don't know if this is correct (at least in places like RBNY, SKC).