Rob Stone is sick of the Revolution, says it's time to 'pull them out of New England'
The New England Revolution are a controversial team in MLS and most of that is owed to their ownership. The Krafts were one of the first owners in MLS and helped keep the league afloat in the early days, but their commitment in recent years has paled in comparison to the other ownership groups. The Revolution still play in an NFL stadium, don't have the infrastructure that other clubs have and don't spend the way other clubs do.
In short, the Revolution have stood still while the rest of the league has grown and FOX Sports' Rob Stone is sick of it. He laid into the club on SiriusXM FC's United States of Soccer.
I am so annoyed with the New England Revolution right now as a club. I don't know what they're doing, but it's driving me mad. And I'm a New Englander, and I get it. In that past, that people didn't mind driving to Foxborough. And yes, it was this regional team and you could pull people from New Hampshire, and Vermont, and Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and Rhode Island. It doesn't work anymore.
Team Kraft, take some of those Super Bowl earnings and really, truly, invest them in your club. I am so sick of seeing that team in that empty stadium, playing on that turf with all those lines. It's disrespectful to those players, to the club, to the fans, to the league. It drives me nuts. It drives me so insane.
Alexi hears this all the time on our drives to work, and he knows if he wants to rile me up -- I'm not a riled up character, but he'll just talk about, "how about the Revolution?" And I'll go "my god, the Revolution," and I'll just start spinning out of control. And the stadium takes me there.
And you know what? The Kraft ownership takes me there as well. I appreciate what they've done for this sport in the past, and what they've done for this league in the past, but what have you done for me lately? Nothing. They have done nothing for the New England Revolution lately. They have disrespected that franchise for far too long and I'm sick of it.
I would pull them out of New England and give them to another city right now, if I had my druthers. They need to re-brand. I'm sick of looking at that uniform. I'm sick of looking at that logo and those colors. Like, show me that you care. Do something, anything, to really show the fan base, and to the national perspective out there, that you guys want to go forward. I love that team. I really want to see them succeed. But they have betrayed me and I'm so agitated with them, in case you can't tell.
The Revolution's logo and jerseys have been the same (generally) since 1996, the first season of MLS. They've seen nearly every team in the league get a new stadium -- D.C. United, the team that could never get a new stadium, even broke ground on theirs -- and most are now in city centers, as opposed to out in the suburbs. There is no doubting that MLS has passed the Revolution by and there's no indication that the club are especially desperate to make significant changes anytime soon.
Stone is hardly the only MLS fan who hasn't been happy with the Revolution, and as more expansion teams and established teams continue to push the league forward, the pressure will only increase on New England and the Krafts.
