Those three years from 2010 to 2012 in which the New England Revolution missed the playoffs seem to run together as one long, dark chasm in the history of an original MLS franchise.
Nowadays, of course, things are much brighter and the gap of that draught has been bridged, linking together an extraordinary eight-year run of postseason success with this new era of Revolution prosperity.
“They have brought entertainment back to New England, when for a few years there they were boring as crap,” said ESPN analyst and former Revolution great Taylor Twellman ahead of the second leg of the Eastern Conference Championship of the MLS Cup Playoffs, presented by AT&T, against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday at Gillette Stadium (3 pm ET; NBCSN, get tickets here). “[There is a] respect around the league when you bring up the New England Revolution. They’re a good team, they're fun to play against because you know the game is going to be good, they're going to try and play the game the right way, and they're difficult to defend.”
That eight straight years of making the playoffs came under coach Steve Nicol and included four MLS Cup appearances, three in a row from 2005 to 2007.
Much like the current crop of Revs players, the makeup of those teams included a mixture of young and veteran talent that balanced out, to near perfection at times.
Back then, through the draft New England stacked the deck with the likes of Twellman, Shalrie Joseph, Clint Dempsey and Michael Parkhurst, and stalwarts Matt Reis and Jay Heaps were acquired via trades.
Similarly, the current roster has that balance and more importantly the same mindset and cameraderie that bonds teams for the common cause.
“It’s hard to compare, but when you look at the mentality of the two groups, there’s a lot of similarities in there,” said Heaps, now New England's head coach. “We never wanted to be a team that you wanted to come play. I think that was something that we definitely had as a group in ‘05, ‘06, ’07.”
“The chemistry with the guys is the one thing I noticed the most that’s very similar compared to back in the days,” added Joseph, who captained many of those earlier teams and returned to New England this season. “All the guys, we get along, we look forward to practicing. Guys are looking forward to being around each other. That’s one of the things we had in ‘05, ‘06, ‘07.”
The landscape of the league in general has certainly changed and did so in spades during the Revs downturn.
Expansion has allowed the league to grow in both numbers and stature, the international market has played a much larger role and in turn the competition level has been raised.
“It was much different times [back then],” said Heaps. “For me, the league has just evolved so much and gotten so much bigger and better in a lot of areas.”
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“I think when you look at the struggles they had in 2010-2012, they still stayed the course, used allocation money and got the right players that fit into both the locker room and what coach Jay Heaps wanted,” Twellman added. “Bad teams get allocation money, but what teams do with it is key. And New England made good on those funds.”
It’s been those players, many of whom were acquired during that time that have bought into the system and brought this team back to prominence, sparking hopes that maybe now is the time that the organization can finally capture their first MLS Cup.
“This team is capable of winning it all,” said Joseph. “We have a great team, we have a great bunch of guys that come in and work every day. They believe in one common goal, not individual. I think this team can and will go all the way.”
