Revolution II will start in USL League One in 2020

It’s official: the Revolution will have a lower league club starting in 2020.

The new entity, which will be branded Revolution II, will play in the United Soccer League’s League One, a league that sits in the American Soccer Pyramid’s third division.

Revs II will play their home matches at Gillette Stadium as well as the potential of playing matches in other parts of New England. The team will also train at the soon-to-be-completed training center just to the south of the main Gillette complex.

More information, such as a crest, technical staff, as well as the roster, will be released in the coming months.

In addition to Revs II, Inter Miami — which enters Major League Soccer in 2020 — announced it will operate an Inter Miami B side in League One, and the two clubs will be part of a five-club expansion effort along with Union Omaha SC in Nebraska, Penn FC, and the Rochester Rhinos, which formerly had a development agreement with the Revolution before dropping out of the former USL Pro two years ago.

League One opened this season with 10 clubs, with a 28-match slate. In its inaugural season of 2019, the season began on March 29 and ended this past weekend, with two rounds of playoffs settled between the top four clubs over the next week and a half.

BSJ Analysis

I wrote back in June when whispers of this potential team first brewed that this is something I’m 100 percent in favor of occurring. The fact this club is a reality now is a massive step — a crucial step — in the Original MLS outfit’s growth as a successful soccer franchise.

It also should have happened long before now, which is something we’ve argued about to the point of going blue in the face.  But the past is in the past, and it’s time to look to the future.

In short, the club is smartening up, and we here see that as a good thing.

Teams in this league use these lower division clubs as another level of development for many of their academy players — you should see the amounts of emails I receive from certain clubs signing their academy players to USL League One contracts — so when they are ready to move up, they can advance to the MLS level. I’m eager to see the names of certain Revs Academy U19s and U23s filter into my email inbox between now and March.

And remember what I wrote over the summer: some clubs use their League One rosters as supplemental help, especially when the US Open Cup rolls around. That would give the first-teamers a breather during those pivotal stretches where the fixture congestion means multiple short turnarounds in consecutive weeks. Having the League One players come up should aid in recovery.

And having the League One entity will help give certain players, one who are stagnating on the Revolution first-team bench, the ability to continue to develop here, under the eyes of Bruce Arena and the first team technical staff, instead of sending them out on loan to places like Birmingham, North Carolina, or even down the street in Hartford. They would train the same way, and — hopefully — stay in the same type of system, so they can continue growing and developing.