January 25, New England Revolution coach Jay Heaps, goalkeeper Matt Reis and defender A.J. Soares answered questions from the press via teleconference on the progress of the struggling team in preseason. In 2011, the Revolution finished 17th out of the 18 MLS teams.
Historical shake-up
Last fall, after three years of declining performance, head coach Steve Nicol and his assistant Stephen Myles were released and management reorganized. Revolution president Sunil Gulati was replaced by CEO Brian Bilello and Gulati, who guided the organization since 1999, remains as a special advisor to The Kraft Group and The Kraft Family. Vice-president player personnel Mike Burns was promoted to general manager and former defender, investment banker and 2011 color analyst Jay Heaps was appointed head coach.
What's new
Since Heaps took the reins in November, there have been positive changes but the Revolution have a long road ahead to catch up to the pace of progress in most MLS teams. For assistant coach, Heaps appointed Jay Miller, a college and U.S. National Team youth coach. Former Revolution defender Nick Downing was hired as the team's first-ever strength and conditioning coach and Scott Emmens was hired as equipment manager. A Revolution-specific training room was installed at Gillette and the team revealed an improved 2012 jersey.
Pruning the roster, New England declined the options of Pat Phelan, Kheli Dube, Ryan Cochrane, Franco Coria, designated player Milton Caraglio, Rajko Lekic and Monsef Zerka and waived three young players who never made a first team appearance – Alan Koger, Andrew Sousa and Otto Loewy.
The Revolution re-signed Shalrie Joseph, now as a designated player, and signed D.C. United midfielder Clyde Simms, Colombians Fernando Cardenas and John Lozano, Generation adidas draft picks Kelyn Rowe and Tyler Polak and are reviewing four other draft picks and multiple trialists where they’re currently training in Arizona. Also, the staff continue talks with Danish striker Rajko Lekic, who declined the extended semi-guaranteed contract and returned with his family to Denmark, citing a need for more security but a real desire to play for the Revolution.
Unfortunately, the signings to date are not even adequate, let alone progressive.
The most encouraging sign is that Heaps arranged a far more challenging 2012 preseason than in the past two years. The team are currently training in Arizona and will return to Arizona on February 20 to play a round-robin preseason tournament, the FC Tucson Desert Diamond Cup, where they'll face the three best teams in MLS: 2011 MLS Cup Champion LA Galaxy, New York Red Bulls and 2009 MLS Cup Champion Real Salt Lake.
The 2012 Revolution season kicks off at the San Jose Earthquakes on March 10, just a month and a half away, and the team has a lot of work to do. During the teleconference, I asked Heaps and Reis some questions about recent changes and what to expect.
LE: What’s the status of Rajko Lekic?
Heaps: The status of Rajko Lekic is that we’ve been in talks. I think that it’s a little early to say. The offer that we extended was last year at the end of the season was the beginning of a dialogue and that dialogue is still running. We’re looking at a lot of different players as well. The door is certainly not on our end shut, but we are trying to figure out what’s best going forward. To say there’s a dialogue is the best way to describe the talks right now.
LE: Are you looking for a proven goal scorer or a designated player?
Heaps: Yes, on proven goal scorer and I would say the designated player - by me hesitating you’re probably anticipating that the answer is going to be yes. I think the answer is - everything is on the table.
LE: In 2011, draft pick Ryan Kinne only got one minute of playing time yet he was signed for another year. What’s behind that decision to bring him back?
Heaps: To be fair, I have not seen enough of Ryan Kinne last year. I was able to make it to two reserve games last year and I thought Ryan did well for himself. I think also, we don’t just make decisions on the fly. I did a little research from what he did in college and then I did some research with Remi Roy and our past reserve team coach, Peter Fuller, and both of them said he’s a player that maybe didn’t get to the field, but still certainly had a lot left in the tank in terms of what he can do on the field. So I wanted to give him his fair shake and a fair look.
LE: Assistant coach Jay Miller had a venerable career as a U.S. national youth team coach and college coach, but how is that going to work when he’s dealing with veteran pros like Shalrie Joseph, Benny Feilhaber and Matt Reis? What are the takeaways from putting a youth coach into a pro situation?
Reis: I wouldn’t call him a youth coach. He’s coached at the youth national teams and he’s coached at a very high level throughout 30 years. Whether you’re working with kids that are under 15 or men that are under 36, it doesn’t make any difference. The game is still the same and his experience and knowledge throughout the years is far going to outweigh whether we’re talking about a professional team or whether you’re talking about a youth team. We’re all working on this together. I don’t think it’s just up to him to make everything great, but he’s going to bring his knowledge and help us in terms of tactically and soccer-wise the things that we’re going to need to work on.
Heaps: When you look at Jay Miller, you look at what he’s done at the national team level and the youth level, but he’s also been national team coach on an interim basis and he’s also been a full-time scout for some of our World Cup teams.
LE: Tactically, what is Miller bringing new to the team this year?
Heaps: Well, probably about four lifetime’s worth of knowledge of the game. I think this game repeats itself. It’s got to get newer. There’s a lot of knowledge for me personally taking from a guy like Jay Miller. I have my own sense of the game, I’ve played it for many years, I’ve always been around it, I’ve loved it from every which way you can play it. But at the same time, there are tactical ideas that sometimes you may overlook as a player and certainly the minute Jay Miller was hired we started diving into all the tactical changes we want to make as a team. He’s been huge for someone like me to bounce ideas off of, get his input, give up new ideas and someone to lean on when it comes to that area of the game.
LE: So, what tactical changes are you making this year, what changes are you working towards?
Heaps: We are going to make a lot of changes. Right now, we have ideas of where we want to go tactically and if I tell you this, it’s premature. I think that just fundamentally there’s going to be changes across the back line - how we play, not defensive, but with the ball. Where are our outside backs getting the ball? Where are our center backs going to be when they have the ball, are they going to be 10 yards apart or 30 yards apart? These are things we’ve made changes to or we’re going to make changes to. But to start telling you exactly how we’re going to play without all of our players being here, we haven’t received Benny Feilhaber into camp yet, we haven’t received Kelyn Rowe and the Colombians have just gotten here late last night. There’s a lot going on with what we’re going to do tactically.
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