Anyway, Revs fans, here's some salt for the wounds.
------------------------
From The Eagle-Tribune, Nov. 13, 2005:
America’s Team
Nicol’s commitment to U.S. talent leads Revs to top
On Soccer
Tim Bresnahan
FRISCO, Texas -- When Major League Soccer unveiled its team names and logos in October 1995, the New England Revolution emblem was one of the most subdued in a garish lot.
Six blue stars, arranged to form a soccer ball, sat in the left-hand corner of a field of five red stripes, creating the image of a tattered, colonial American flag.
On the field, however, the men who wore that crest hardly inspired patriotic fervor. In their first six seasons, the club never posted a winning record, never won a playoff series, and never developed one young American who became a regular for the national team.
But since then, New England has transformed itself. Former head coach Fernando Clavijo started the rebuilding, drafting Taylor Twellman, Shalrie Joseph and Marshall Leonard in 2002. Clavijo’s successor, Steve Nicol, followed with three drafts that brought Pat Noonan, Clint Dempsey and Michael Parkhurst to Foxboro.
Those players have formed the nucleus of the best team in franchise history. Today, the Revs attempt to win their first MLS Cup title (3:30 p.m., Chs. 5, 9) against Los Angeles, and they’ll try to do it with a lineup that will likely be comprised entirely of players born and/or raised in the United States.
It took 10 seasons, but the guys with the flag on their chest have finally become America’s team.
What’s most remarkable about this club’s metamorphosis, however, is that a Scotsman has orchestrated it. Nicol arrived in America just six years ago, but he’s quickly become a master of selecting top U.S. talent.
“He’s done a great job picking players out of the draft,” said Dempsey, a Texan who went to Furman University. “He’s done a great job trying to build a team around Americans.”
A legendary defender for both Liverpool and the Scottish National Team, Nicol hailed from a place where U.S. soccer gets little respect and the American developmental system (especially college soccer) is considered dreadfully inadequate. With all of his overseas contacts, Nicol could have tried to build a team around aging British stars or marginal prospects from the European mainland.
But Nicol wasn’t a Euro-snob. He gave American players a chance, and he’s been richly rewarded for it.
“I came with an open mind, to be honest,” he said. “Whatever it takes, whatever we can get that makes us better, we’ll do it. I don’t have any preconceived ideas of where we should get players from. It would be nice if they were American, but if we can’t do that, we’ll look elsewhere as well.”
Nicol hasn’t had to look elsewhere. His projected starting lineup for today includes 10 U.S. citizens, including Twellman (the 2005 league MVP), Parkhurst (the 2005 Rookie of the Year), Dempsey (the 2004 Rookie of the Year) and Noonan (the runner-up for 2003 Rookie of the Year). The only non-American is Joseph, a Grenada international who moved to Brooklyn as a teenager and attended St. John’s University.
Oddly enough, Nicol has struggled to find foreign players who fit in well with the Revs. Uruguayan midfielder Jose Cancela has been Nicol’s best international pickup, and he likely won’t start today. But because he’s done so well on the domestic front, Nicol hasn’t needed to strike it rich abroad.
Nicol’s focus on U.S. talent benefits not only the Revs, but his adopted country as well.
“As I’ve said before, part of my job is to help encourage American players in our league,” said Nicol, whose son, Michael, plays football at Springfield College. “The more players you have in this league who are the best players in the league (and) are American, the better for the league, the better for the national team.
U.S. head coach Bruce Arena would concur. Twellman, Noonan, Dempsey and veteran Steve Ralston are all serious contenders for World Cup spots next summer, and Parkhurst and veteran goalkeeper Matt Reis are darkhorse candidates.
Twellman, Noonan and Dempsey all earned their first national team appearance within a year of their MLS debuts | a fact which speaks volumes about the Revs’ ability to choose young players who are ready for the professional level.
“It’s a credit to ‘Stevie Nic’ and the coaching staff as well, finding guys who can come in and step in in their first year,” said Noonan, a forward who went to Indiana University. “It’s good to have a nice American core of guys who get along on and off the field.”
Parkhurst is the latest U.S. success story. The Rhode Island native starred as a center back at Wake Forest University, but he fell all the way to No. 9 in the 2005 draft. Nicol selected him there, and put him in the starting lineup for the season opener.
Serving as the center back in a three-man defense, Parkhurst took on a great deal of responsibility. He didn’t flinch, playing every minute of every game and justifying Nicol’s confidence in him.
“He gave me a chance to prove myself, where a lot of coaches probably wouldn’t let a rookie try and man a three-back system,” said Parkhurst. “So obviously I’m very grateful for that opportunity.”
One U.S. player after another has seized the opportunity with the Revs over the last four seasons. New England’s success is a testament to the improvement of American talent, as is Twellman’s MVP selection; he’s just the third American-born player to win the award in 10 years.
An MLS Cup championship, however, would be the most emphatic endorsement of the way that Nicol and the Revs have built their team. It’s a club full of Caribbean, Latin American and British influences, with a foundation of American athleticism. And by tonight, it could be the best team in the nation.
“It’s just a mixture of a lot of different styles,” said Dempsey. “I’d compare it to like kung fu or karate, all those martial arts. Like Bruce Lee was saying, the best is all of them put together.
“Hopefully, American soccer kind of does that, takes the best from every country as far as styles, and puts them together to make one really good one. You can’t knock the formula, because it’s been working.
