Is Sene 'The One'?

We here as well as the rest of New England have been constantly searching for that 'proven goalscorer 'and 'the one' who can replace what this team lost when Twellman's career was so unfortunately cut short.  This season it seems as if the hot new player for the Revolution is Lee Nguyen, and he's great don't get me wrong, but I think Sene is really the player everyone should be talking about.

Riders Hosting FIFA Tourney To Benefit Think Taylor

On November 8th, The Midnight Rider will be hosting a FIFA 12 video game tournament to benefit Think Taylor, founded by former Revoluton star Taylor Twellman.  In TDIF's first ever interview we spoke with Twellman about the event.

TDIF: So tell us about Think Taylor, for those who don't know much about your organization.

TT: In 2008 I suffered a concussion and after that dealt with Post Concussion Syndrome (still am) and there was nothing to help guide me in the right direction. Well I want to be the resource for players, parents, coaches, trainers to find the right people to help advise them and get them healthy quickly. "If you have a broken foot, you don't see an eye doctor".

What Is Love? Lalas and Twellman

Spotted by Ginge Talks The Footie this is too good to pass up...and it give me the chance to use multiple YouTube clips which I love... Anyways at 0:13 you can clearly see Lalas an Twellman getting their Night At The Roxbury on...  Ah former Revs at their best...

MLS Schedule Is Late Because...

Domestic violence isn't funny but the
#MLSScheduleIsLateBecause hash tag is

Soccer by Ives tweeted a funny challenge today on Twitter around the late relase of the MLS schedule today.  It was simple complete this hash tag #MLSScheduleIsLateBecause. It ended up trending at least at number 3 worldwide... impressive stuff. We recap our favorites here... oh ya and the Revolution schedule is down there somewhere too.

#MLSScheduleIsLateBecause...
1. ...Seattle fans haven't invented it yet
2. … It was in the same folder as "New Stadiums for New England and DC United"
3. ...the Krafts needed to sign it for approval & they needed someone to look into what the "New England Revolution" was
4. ...they put the #Revs front office in charge of it and they do not do anything in the offseason.
5. ...they were reading the revs bigsoccer forum and got depressed.
6. ...they're backloading the #revs schedule to allow for the big summer dp signing... of khano smith.
 7. ...Pres Mubarak of Egypt only agreed to step down if he could get tix to Opening Day. Announcement soon
8. ... someone put it with Clint Dempsey's allocation money.

9. ...someone put it with the New England Revolution's Designated Player slots and nobody can remember where those are
10. ...@TaylorTwellman just joined the party and is repeating everyone's ideas


Only one July home game is ridiculous, but at least Red Bull away is on a Saturday again this year... finally... more on away games as we get closer to the season. Without further ado... (like you haven't seen it already)

MARCH

3.20.11 - New England at LA Galaxy 8:00pm
3.26.11 - D.C. United at New England 4:30pm


APRIL


4.2.11 - Portland at New England 7:30pm
4.6.11 - New England at Vancouver 10:00pm
4.9.11 - Real Salt Lake at New England 7:30pm
4.17.11 - New England at Houston Dynamo 7:00pm
4.23.11 - Sporting Kansas City at New England 7:30pm
4.30.11 - New England at Chivas USA 10:30pm

MAY

5.7.11 - Colorado Rapids at New England 7:30pm
5.14.11 - Vancouver at New England 7:30pm
5.21.11 - New England at San Jose 10:30pm
5.28.11 - LA Galaxy at New England 8:00pm

JUNE

6.4.11 - New England at FC Dallas 8:30pm
6.11.11 - New England at New York Red Bull 7:30pm(yes it's an away game but there is no excuse not to travel for this game... seriously... no excuse)
6.15.11 - Toronto FC at New England 8:00pm
6.18.11 - Chicago Fire at New England 7:30pm
6.26.11 - New England at Seattle 4:00pm

JULY

7.4.11 - New England at Real Salt Lake 8:30pm
7.16.11 - Philadelphia Union at New England 7:30pm
7.20.11 - New England at D.C. United 7:30pm
7.23.11 - New England at Colorado Rapids 9:00pm
7.30.11 - New England at Sporting Kansas City 8:30pm

AUGUST

8.3.11 - San Jose at New England 8:00pm
8.6.11 - Chivas USA at New England 7:30pm
8.13.11 - New England at Columbus Crew 7:30pm
8.17.11 - Houston Dynamo at New England 8:00pm
8.20.11 - New York Red Bull at New England 7:30pm
8.28.11 - New England at Philadelphia Union 7:00pm

SEPTEMBER

9.11.11 - FC Dallas at New England 7:30pm
9.16.11 - New England at Portland 10:30pm
9.25.11 - New England at Chicago Fire 4:00pm

OCTOBER

10.1.11 - Seattle at New England 7:30pm
10.15.11 - Columbus Crew at New England 7:30pm
10.22.11 - New England at Toronto FC 12:30pm

Midnight Riders Tribute To Taylor Twellman

 

The Midnight Riders have released this great tribute to a great player Taylor Twellman.  They are going for 20 bucks and are available on the Riders website and will be available at their annual meeting, February 19th at Doyle's in Jamaica Plain.  All profits will be donated to a charity that Twellman is forming.

Midnight Riders

Quality of Life Index: End of Offseason Entering Pre-season 2011

Apparently most of our off season transfers got snowed in and couldn't make it...

So the last time we brought you the Quality Of Life Index it was somewhere around the halfway point of the offseason, with pre-season having started we look at what's gone on since the last QoL post.

88 Days Out, Revolution Offseason Quality of Life Index...

So we are going to start a new piece here at TDIF, the Quality of Life index.  Yes I am stealing this from Boston's Weekly Dig, but well it is one of my favorite pieces in that periodical.

So we will start this QoL with reviewing the offseason thus far.

Taylor Twellman Retires

After 8 Years and 101 goals scored for the Revolution Taylor Twellman retired due repeated concussions.  Taylor was the face of the revolution and was a huge asset both on and off the field.  Replacing him will not be easy and if anything the Revolution have shown that they are not very good at replacing star players when the leave (i.e. Clint Dempsey). MINUS 101

Revs Players Head to Plymouth Argyle For Offseason Training

Zack Schilawski and Bobby Shuttleworth went to train with former Revolution assistant Paul Mariner with his side Plymouth Argyle for 10 days.  We had been told that there would be some sort of loose alliance when Mariner left the Revs to take over the Pilgrims and this was the first instance we've seen so far.  While we hope we see more of this Argyle's financial problems do make us worry about the long term viability of the club... like will they even exist next year...  If Plymouth does fold can we please get Mariner back, we seem to have lost a major piece of the puzzle when he left. PLUS 10

Revolution Sign First Ever Home Grown Player

Fifteen year old Diego Fagundez become the Revolution's first ever home grown player when he signed with the team. Fagundez has been playing for the Revs Under-16 squad where he scored twenty goals, and got U.S. Soccer Development Academy National Starting XI honors. Fagundez has also been called into the US National Under-15 squad. PLUS 15


Expansion Draft

The Revs for the first time ever did not have anyone selected in the expansion draft... EVEN

Revolution Put Up Four Player for Re-Entry Draft and Take 2

Khano Smith, Corey Gibbs, Nico Colaluca and Preston Burpo were all cut in for placement in the new Re-entry draft.  We have no problem with these selections, however we did like Burpo and thought that he did a good job as keeper until his unfortunate/horrific leg fracture during a game vs. the Red Bulls.

On the other side of things the Revs picked up the rights to Fred and Ryan Cochrane, whether they actually come to an agreement of terms and sign with the team will remain to be seen.
PLUS 3 (We left a point out for you Preston) 


Revolution Stadium Groundbreaking Soon... But Maybe Not...

In an interview on the D.A. Show on 98.5 The Sportshub, Revolution Investor/Operator stated when asked about a Soccer Specific Stadium for the Revolution that “From our perspective, we would hope in the next 12-24 months we would have something we would be breaking ground on … ”  Stop us if you've heard similar talk before...

Later that week COO Brian Bilello stated that "I think that we will definitely have a stadium at some point" in an interview on Fox 25 News with Ryan Asselta.  This would have been a perfect opportunity to reinforce Kraft's assertions of 12-24 months however it wasn't and the idea of a stadium in the near future seemed to be backtracked on a bit.

Actions speak louder than words... MINUS 12-24

Revolution Seeking Double Pe... uhhh DP.... Designated Player

Legitimate media outlets for the first time reported that the Revolution was seeking to add a DP or possibly even 2 to the roster. "At the ownership level, we've talked about it,'' said Bilello. "This team hasn't performed the way we wanted it this year, and in talking to ownership, their priority is not only getting better but they want to get better quickly. In talking about it, it was very clear they understand that there might be things that might take some time to do, and they wanted to think of ways that we could get better very quickly.  So frankly, what we decided on is we are going to be looking bring in a Designated Player this off season.'' 

This was early in October, and there has only been one player even loosely associated with the Revs as a possible DP candidate.With all the roster space and cap space available this year we are pretty disappointed that there have been absolutely no signings made yet, DP or not.  Other teams have made moves already and have had rumored moves, sorry but the using the excuse that the transfer window doesn't open til January is not a good excuse anymore. MINUS 2




So for an offseason that should be full of major news for Revs fans there hasn't been much we have less than 3 months till our first game against LA on March 20th... the clock it ticking...

OVERALL: MINUS 87-99
 

Rapids Win the Cup, Wells get Ripped by Twellman, and much more...

Winning the cup... with Wells Tohmpson oh wait we mean Thompson.  So ya.... about that the Rapids beat Dallas 2-1 on an own goal... seriously... an own goal and the game went into overtime.  I will say this about the game though, the last 3 mins were very exciting with Dallas pushing hard trying to get that late equalizer to push it to penalties.

Also it seems like now that Taylor Twellman has retired he's opening his mouth a little more on his twitter page, "

TaylorTwellman

the sub of Thompson may bite @Rapidssoccer in the rear end because he has no self control whatsoever." and

TaylorTwellman

and yes thank you @torontofc for putting in GRASS for your stadium...#gameismeanttobeplayedongrass" So wait the Field Turf at Gillette is no good... I am shcoked!!!!!!!!!

So in other MLS cup weekend news Don Garber has stated that we will continue with the balanced schedule next year, and in addition to two new teams being added to the league they will be adding 2 more playoff spots.  Seriously? 2 more? the playoffs for MLS have always been a joke because pretty much any team could get into them and you just needed to be on a hot streak to win the league.  This season it started to balance out a little bit with only half of the teams being eligible for the playoffs, but seriously what is the point of the regular season if it's easy to get into the playoffs?  In addition to the playoff changes Garber says that the will find a way to make sure that a Western Conference team cannot become the Eastern Champion or vice versa.  We should know more about how this plan will be put into action in the next month. You can see the Don's interview on ESPN last night below.

Ok so more Don talk from the Supporters Summit, basically sounds like the state of the league is very good, there are more people wanting to buy in than they are currently willing to allow in, they fell that now they need to work on strengthening the league and the leagues support.  Don stated that he recognizes the need for supporters groups and to spread their passion on down to the casual fans. Travellign support was also touched upon and it seems like they may finally be getting the point that this is a major issue for supporters and that they will be workign hard on this issue and making some changes to the plicies or enacting new policies related to traveling support.  We've been working an in depth piece about travelling support which hopefully we will have up in the next few days.  If you have an hour or so and would like to watch the supporters summit... we got you covered...

That's the MLS weekend in an abbreviated nutshell(I'm feeling lazy today... I could write more but I don't feel like it and well I can't very easily not write anything at all about its so there ya go (hey at least I'm honest!))

Twellman Retirement Official, Trialists Already In the Revolution Camp

Taylor Twellman offically retired this week ending 2 long years of speculation over his future.  Now with over 400k in cap space freed up and another 250k freed up by the release of Edgaras Jankauskus the Revolution will not be able to use the injury excuse as to why they cannot sign addtional players or improve the squad.

Enough has been written about Twellman this week and he's been all over the news, plus I'm lazy so if you want to read more go here.

Speaking of improving the squad the Revs currently have Filip Krstic on trial and joining them in some post season training sessions. Kristic has a strong pedigree and is young which counters previous trialists and signings, possibly the Revs have learned that no name Africans generally don't cut it in the MLS and way past their prime aging Europeans will just get broken.  Krstic is a 22 year old German born Serb (Serbs seem to work for us, we'll just ignore the war crimes) and is a left/center defender.  Krstic's youth career starts at SpVgg Unterhaching, with stints at Bayern Munich, Hertha BSC and Valencia.  He's represented Serbia at both the U-17 and U-19 level with a total 28 appearances and 5 goals.  His professional career includes time at Livorno (2008), Arminia Bielefeld II (2009) and is currently at the German third division club SV Babelsberg 03.

T-N-T Press conference

Well Mr Taylor "I scored 101 goals and am too sexy for my shirt" Twellman is set o have a press conference tomorrow at 1:30pm streamed live on revolutionsoccer.net.  All signs point to him announcing his retirement due to his multiple concussions.  We'll follow this up more tomorrow.