FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – It has been less than two months since the New England Revolution suffered a heart-wrenching, 2-1 extratime defeat to the LA Galaxy in the 2014 MLS Cup, and the wounds still run deep.
Despite the quickest turnaround time from one season to the next for the Revs, there is no place they’d rather be this week as they report for preseason, ready to wash away those memories and move forward following one of the more successful seasons in the organization’s history.
“The shorter the better in our business,” coach Jay Heaps said. “We’re back in there and you can tell there’s a little bit of an edge, and guys are excited to get back. It’s a little different in the way we’re going into preseason just because it was a shorter offseason. The players have gotten a good break. We didn’t have as much offseason to ramp them back up, so now we’ve got to do that in preseason.”
Striker Charlie Davies admitted being depressed about the loss for nearly two weeks following New England's cup-final heartbreak.
“We’ll have that taste in our mouths for a while,” he said. “We’ll use that as motivation for this year.”
One of MLS's founding clubs, New England enter their 20th season with a much larger target on their backs after capturing their first Eastern Conference championship since 2007. Returning 18 players, including 16 who dressed for MLS Cup, the Revs are sturdy enough on paper to handle the extra pressures.
The club's own expectations haven’t changed, but the optimism and confidence have certainly risen. Now it’s a matter of taking the preseason and pulling it all together as a unit before their March 8 opener in Seattle.
“It’s important that we continue to get better,” said Davies. “The expectations are exactly the same. We made huge strides as a team last season, especially towards the end. We just have to get back to building as a team.”
- Find more Revs news and notes at RevolutionSoccer.net
Said defender Andrew Farrell: “Now the standard is to make it the final every year. We’re a good team. We’ve returned a lot of the guys from last year. We know we can get there, like we did last year. Hopefully this year we can make that final step and win the whole thing.”
With that added weight on their shoulders, the team knows that ultimately, the only way to get back to the league's biggest stage is to dissect what got them there last season, and work week to week on replicating it.
“This year, now, you go over steps to get there,” said Heaps. “If you start by saying you’ve got to win MLS Cup, then you’ve already lost. We look at the small steps and what we need to do.”
