It started as an innocent enough Twitter poll posted by The Greg Hill Show Wednesday morning: Who is the best coach/manager in Boston?
The options were Alex Cora, Bill Belichick and Bruce Cassidy. Celtics coach Ime Udoka was not included since he hasn’t yet coached a game, so the poll was limited to three choices rather than Twitter’s maximum of four.
The problem? There was a fourth option that could have been included, and the slighted team was quick to point that out.
That would be the New England Revolution, standing up for their coach, Bruce Arena. They followed up by jumping on the latest internet meme, suggesting that it’s a red flag for a Boston fan to only support the Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics.
The Revs are right. Intentional or not, there is still too much disrespect when it comes to the local soccer team. Now would be a good time for that to change.
We -- meaning WEEI specifically, but also Boston sports fans and media generally -- should be giving the Revs more love, or at the very least not ignoring them. (In the sake of fairness here, Gresh & Keefe producer Chris Scheim makes a point to always include the Revs in his Trending Nows.)
I could go into all the details of why that’s more of a challenge than we’d like and bore you with talk of resources and time and what draws pageviews and ratings. It’s all the same stuff we’d mention if this was a discussion about the Pride or BC football or college hockey.
But just on merit alone, this year’s Revs are a terrific story that deserve the kind of excitement and support this region pours into its “big four.” And Major League Soccer is growing, as evidenced by a 50% jump in TV ratings over last season.
If you haven’t been following, the Revs are having their best regular season ever, and one of the best regular seasons in MLS history. They clinched a playoff spot with a month and a half left in the season and have already locked up the top seed in the Eastern Conference with five games to go. They’re 18 points ahead of any East rival and 10 points ahead of the West’s top team. This graphic illustrating their season-long dominance is laugh-out-loud funny:
They have players who are making names for themselves not just among Revs fans and MLS fans, but on an international scale.
Carles Gil is the best playmaker in MLS and should be this year’s league MVP despite missing six of the Revs’ 29 games. Matt Turner has emerged as the No. 1 goalkeeper for the U.S. national team, carrying his excellent MLS play into international competitions like the Gold Cup and World Cup qualifying.
Twenty-two-year-old winger Tajon Buchanan has developed into a key player on Canada’s national team. After the Revs’ season ends, he’ll be moving on to Club Brugge, the best team in Belgium and one that recently tied superpower Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.
Forward Adam Buksa made his international debut with Poland in World Cup qualifying last month and promptly scored four goals in his first two games. We haven’t even mentioned Gustavo Bou, nicknamed “La Pantera,” who is tied with Buksa for fourth in MLS in goals with 13 and leads the team in combined goals and assists (19).
And to circle back to where this all started, there’s the coach: Bruce Arena. One of the most successful coaches in U.S. soccer history, Arena has won five MLS Cups, coached the U.S. national team in two World Cups and an Olympics, and been inducted in the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
The Revolution still have that big final hurdle to clear: winning it all. They have made the MLS Cup final five times in their history, but have lost all five times. Last year they lost in the conference finals. But they are better set up to finally get it done now than they’ve ever been in the past.
It's obviously a busy time in Boston sports right now. The Red Sox are back in the ALCS. The Patriots are into the second quarter of their season. The Bruins and Celtics are about to get going.
Boston fans can never get enough winning, though, and the Revs are a winning team worth making time for. An October World Series run followed by a November/December MLS Cup run sounds pretty good.