Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Nuno Gomes

It was announced today that Nuno Gomes will be leaving Benfica. He has been linked to the Revolution in the past as well as with Toronto FC. Lets assume that the Revs are interested in signing him at the moment, after all, they're trying to sign two DP's as we speak. Would Nuno Gomes be a good signing? Well, we can't score goals and Gomes is a forward. Seems to make some sense. There is a large Portuguese population in the area, most of whom support Benfica for whom Gomes has spent the majority of his career playing for. So he could definitely put some people in the seats. On the other hand he turns 35 in July and has barely played the last two years. He has had a history of struggling to stay fit and coming over to play on field turf would probably be Jankauskas like. He'd help improve attendance but he wouldn't help us win as I don't think he'd be able to stay healthy and he's pretty much done. For DP money, we can find someone better. There are actually many players in the Portuguese league who the Revs could sign who would help the attack and help the attendance numbers. Many of the players would probably fall below the DP salary level.

-Andrew

3 comments:

  1. I hate to be pessimistic, but:

    1) I do not believe we'll see a noticeable bump from Gomes' presence at Gillette. After years of speaking with people of more "soccer loving" traditions, MLS just can't shake it's criticism as a "poor league."

    2) I'd like a DP, but this teams problems are deeper than a forward is going to come in and fix (short of a world class finisher.) I'm not suggesting MLS has such quality that an impact player wouldn't help, but ball possession and movement remains a huge problem, and if we can't fix that, the goals won't be coming.

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  2. Alex,

    You bring up two good points.

    1)I hear the same things often. A big contributor to that is that people around here usually watch the Revolution. They see how the Revs play and assume the rest of the teams play the same way. If we could get them to watch some other games they might change their mind. We're not going to convince anyone that this is the German league, but we can show people that it's a good solid league.

    I guess it depends on what you define as noticeable. I think he could add 3 or 4 thousand a game. You can say that's not much, but given that we had a couple of games that were below 9,000 this year, it would help.

    2) A DP isn't going to solve all of our problems but at least it would show that ownership is committed to the team and they are willing to put some resources into the team. It should also help raise the play on the field even though it's just one player. They just need to do their work and make sure they're signing a guy who's going to make a positive impact.

    -Andrew

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  3. The best solution for revs is hiring a new coach because we already have had enough of steve nicold. I think this will be the best solution for our team. Go revs.

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