NE Revolution New-Guy Report: Miguel Gonzalez

By: Jeff | March 2nd, 2007

Today, you’ll receive the first of a (currently) six-part series on the newest players in the New England Revolution’s locker room. I’ll admit off the bat that my first contribution isn’t likely to be my best. To begin, I’m only just starting to “reach out and touch” various people who may be able - and, of course, willing - to give me details as to what they know about these players. For instance, with today’s entry, Miguel Gonzalez, I only got around to sending out inquiries this morning and haven’t yet heard back. If and when I do, I suspect I’ll just post that material separately and slip an update link into this, the original post.

OK, with that out of the way, let’s see what I’ve learned (so far) about Miguel Gonzalez.

As mentioned in the set-up post to this series, one can discover plenty about Gonzalez’s parents, musical tastes, favorite club, and a thing or two about his playing career through the profile posted on the New England Revolution’s official site. More than that, though, it’s a good jumping off point for deeper exploration.

For instance, once you read that Gonzalez “has developed into a regular performer for the U.S. U-20 team,” you can head over to US Soccer’s site and poke around there, particularly the bits that relate to that team. The data there paints an interesting picture. It seems Gonzalez had a fairly short career with the U-20s, 2006 being the only year to show statistics for him. I don’t know what all the numbers mean (for instance, “GP/GS” would seem to mean games played/games started and that shows 4/4, but the caps half of the “Caps/Goals” stat at the end shows 3 - and I haven’t even got a guess as to what “Y/R” is), but it appears Gonzalez played a minor role in the 2006 U-20s 14-game total; a look at the 2005 and 2007 player pool suggests that was his one shot in the program while a look at the 2007 U-23 player pool shows he didn’t “graduate” to that level. Taken together, that suggests we’re looking at a bubble player for the youth national team program…so, not certainly not bad - he did score one goal for the U-20s after all, but not stupendous either.

Apart from the U-20s, Gonzalez spent some time between the 2005 and 2006 seasons with the Bradenton Academics, who play in the United Soccer League’s Professional Development League (PDL). That team did pretty well in ‘06 (scroll down to the Southeast Division), at least after Gonzalez left. That’s not to hang responsibility for an indifferent May on Gonzalez, who did well enough for the team, but there’s no denying the Academics fortunes turned around sharply after his departure.

It looks like Gonzalez’s best game in Academics’ white-and-black came against the Carolina Dynamo last May, when he started and scored a goal. He scored the second of his two-ever goals for the Academics a few days earlier in the club’s lone win for May 2006, a game against the (I’m not making this up) Ajax Orlando Prospects. He suited up for Bradenton two other times in 2006 (badda-boom and badda-bing), neither of which produced reportable statistics beyond minutes played, and he played seven games for the team in 2005.

So…that playing history, about 90% of it based in statistics, is about all I’ve got right now. Hopefully, I’ll hear back from the people I wrote at the Bradenton Academics program before too long and get some insight into the Gonzalez’s capabilities and upside. The thing is, after reading all that, his Wikipedia entry (hey…almost famous) and another entry on Answers.com (which told me he trained with Santos Lagunas’ youth team), even after reading Gonzalez’ official Revs’ profile, I still don’t know which foot the guy favors. Here’s to hoping we get to learn that, and another thing or two, through a stellar season, expected or otherwise, from Miguel Gonzalez.

UPDATE: I just posted an addendum to this piece, courtesy of a Q & A with Miguel Gonzalez’s former coach with the Bradenton Academics, Tom Durkin.