Sweeney: With a lack of trying Tuesday, the Revs front office waves the white flag

Like many of you do in your spare time, I used to indulge in a little fantasy sports from time to time. From baseball to football to even basketball and hockey, I was an obsessed fantasy sports junkie. I’d sit in front of my old desktop monitor and go through my options over some really bad coffee, making moves and staying relatively competitive in all my leagues.

And let me tell you, I loved drafting my own teams. I didn’t like letting the computer do it. I had my preferences for players, getting them all lined up in my draft queue. When someone else picked a player that I wanted for my team, I’d give a nice guttural scream in frustration — I may have even used some choice obscenities — but I would ultimately move on to my next target acquisition.

Why am I bringing this up on a sunny Wednesday morning?

The answer is easy. The Revolution, for all their needs that anyone who knows the game can easily see — needs that are beyond the three maximum Salary Budget Charge players already brought in this past offseason — muffed one big time on Tuesday. And they didn’t appear prepared to move on to another target (if there was one) when the first one fell through.

Reports out of Belgium Tuesday indicated that Standard Liege, one of the top teams in that country’s First Division, had accepted a €4 million ($4.5 million) offer for midfielder Paul-José M’Poku, a rumored Revolution target during the offseason. While the Belgian side rejected New England’s initial bid just before the start of preseason, the Foxborough outfit came back and put in the offer after Liege failed to qualify for next fall’s UEFA Champions League. Liege accepted.

But in a twist, M’Poku — a Congolese international — reportedly rejected the move. He doesn’t want to come to Foxborough. And yes, players have the right to veto a move.

Why he rejected the move — which, according to New England Soccer Journal’s Kyle McCarthy, totaled $14 million for the transfer fee as well as M’Poku’s potential salary — isn’t known. I tweeted to M’Poku last night, looking for comment on his reasons for not wanting to come to New England, but I hadn’t received a response as of early Wednesday morning. That being said, I’m not going to speculate on his reasoning.

But with the Primary Transfer Window coming to a close early this morning, it was — given by their silence as the clock moved into the 1 o’clock hour this morning, with nothing in my email by the time I went to bed at 2 a.m., and nothing in it when I woke up at 8 a.m.; if they did something, they would have screamed it from the rooftops right away — apparently the only piece of business the Revolution tried to accomplish Tuesday.

Which brings me back to fantasy sports and drafting players point: why is it that when the Revs have so many weaknesses on this roster (and I outlined them yesterday), that they didn’t go to work on filling problem areas B, C, D, and E when the first-choice problem area player decided against the move?

And to be fair, since the possible wages involved were in the DP range, we have to believe this is the player Brad Friedel spoke of during his 13-minute post-match press conference back on March 24 following the FC Cincinnati debacle. You know, the press conference where he said — and I quote — “I’ll speak openly: I would like those (designated) players from Europe. Getting a player out from Europe, who’s very good, in January, is really difficult, really difficult. (It has) nothing to do with money — (it has) to do with the (selling) club allowing the player to leave. That’s really what this amounts to.

“So, we’re negotiating very hard, and not money, on where the team is in the (league) table, where the position, when can that player be released from his contract. This is a player who’s been scouted a long, long time, who I know personally. And I’ve known him for many, many years, who wants to play here, who wants to live here. And it’s not easy to find those players that are very good. And sometimes waiting a couple extra months is worth the wait for the long term. So this isn’t pushing anything back. This has to do with the player being under contract with somebody else and it’s the player that I and my staff want.”

If M’Poku is the player Friedel spoke about seven weeks ago, then the gaffer must have some egg on his face right now. If I know Friedel the way I know Friedel, he'll back-track and say that's not what he said, or say that M'Poku wasn't the player he referred to on that evening. He's done that before.

“Wants to play here,” he said. “Wants to live here,” he said.

I guess not? Or is the player that he has known a long time and who wants to come here and live here and play here come into the club as the second designated player coming in the Secondary Window? Your guess is as good as mine.

What flummoxes me, and flummoxes others is what happened to a Plan B? Or a Plan C? Did they go into Tuesday with one?

Honestly, we know they didn’t, because that has been the Revolution’s modus operandi when it comes to the Primary Transfer Window. Make a couple of early moves, but do nothing substantial toward the end. Last year, the Revs moved Lee Nguyen to LAFC; in 2017, they didn’t make a move at the end of the Primary. In 2016, they traded for Kei Kamara; while he is a decent player, he did not help New England make the playoffs in either of his two seasons in Foxborough.

Let’s go further back: 2015, the only May move was signing Zachary Herivaux to a Homegrown contract. We know how well that worked out. Next.

In 2014, the Revs re-acquired Shalrie Joseph, who was the ripe old age of 35 at the time. The year before, Juan Agudelo came to the Revs — on May 7 — for the first time. And in 2012, the end of Michael Burns’ first Primary Transfer Window, the Revolution did … nothing.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It sounds like what happened on the soccer side of Patriot Place Tuesday. Nothing. Nothing happened. By not addressing the club's many needs, they threw in the towel.

And that, my friends, is rather pathetic. In one afternoon, while many teams in Major League Soccer made upgrades — hell, 2019 expansion side FC Cincinnati, a team that embarrassed the Revs with a B squad, fired manager Alan Koch after 11 games! — the Revolution front office pretty much waved the white flag on the 2019 season.

Of course, we know what the excuses will be today, or tomorrow, or later in the week: “We tried, but now we’ll focus on the Secondary Window. Deals are much easier to make in the Secondary Window, and that gives us some flexibility.” I don’t even have to be there for the press conference; it’s just like knowing what Bill Belichick will say about getting beat in all three phases of the game when they lose a meaningless early-season game to the Lions. You don’t even need to hold up a cue card. Still, it's inexcusable that a sports team that claims to be professional, one coming off an embarrassing loss, does nothing to improve the squad. No defensive help, no goalkeeping help, no help for the defensive central midfield. Nothing.

But that’s not what I and all of you want to hear coming from the Revolution front office. I want to hear, “I’m sorry. We didn’t try hard enough this time. We failed you, the fans of this once proud soccer club. Our roster is terrible, and it needed to be better in January. It’s not, and we, unfortunately, can’t get anyone to come here to save this team.”

Anything other than those words — well, other than the words, “We resign and turn the club over to competent administrators who know how to get things done for our fans” — are pretty unacceptable.

Maybe the next general manager — you know, after Burns is finally fired, ending a sad era in this club’s history — will be in the mold of a fantasy sports player, one that knows how to be prepared and have back-ups in case anything goes against the way you planned it.

We can only hope.