Since the appointment of legendary soccer figure Bruce Arena as the New England Revolution’s Sporting Director and Head Coach in May, a series of developments have taken place at the club to move it back to the elite in Major League Soccer.

Among those moves was the decision to enter a team in USL League One for the 2020 season, where the Revolution II will join 2019 champion North Texas SC, Orlando City B and Toronto FC II and another new entry for 2020 expansion club Inter Miami CF as MLS owned-and-operated clubs in League One.

Joining Arena in New England as the Revolution’s Technical Director Curt Onalfo, who himself is no stranger to the USL. The first Head Coach of the LA Galaxy II in 2014, Onalfo led a pioneering Los Dos side that was the first MLS owned-and-operated club in the USL Championship at the time, taking the side to the USL Championship Final in the 2015 season.

As the offseason begins, we caught up with Onalfo to talk about bringing League One to the Revolution organization and what it will mean for the club moving forward.

Q: There’s a lot that’s happened at the Revolution since yourself and the new technical leadership arrived at the club in May, at any point have you had the chance to slow down and catch your breath?

Curt Onalfo: Not really, but that’s OK. That’s how these positions are, they’re extremely time-consuming – which is great – and it’s all good. We’re in the process of just putting a lot of really good key elements in place.

Q: One of the moves the club made was the introduction of a USL League One team for next season. How important is this team going to be to the Revolution’s long-term success?

CA: I think it’s a critical step. Obviously, you need to bridge the gap between the Academy and the First Team and it’s a logical thing to do. We feel like it just makes us complete and gives our young players a pathway – and hopefully an accelerated pathway – to success with the First Team. We’re looking forward to it, we think it’s really critical for our organization.

Q: You’ve already had experience in building a USL club having started the first in the Championship with the LA Galaxy II for its launch in 2014. What were the biggest lessons you took from that start-up experience?

CA: I mean, listen, every market is different, every situation is different, you have to obviously get familiar with where you are, and the important thing for us is that we focus on our players that are here locally and make sure we do whatever we can to create this development model where players can move through it.

Then we have to assess the talent pool of positions, and we know what that is having been here for five months, and then we’ll use the USL roster players to fill out areas where we maybe lack some depth and areas where we feel like we can enhance upon so we end up with a complete development model.

Q: What are the most important elements that you’re looking to incorporate into the Revolution II?

CA: We want to make sure that the players that we sign fit into our culture. Obviously, we have profiles of players in every position, but at the same time they need to represent what we’re all about with their character and their work ethic and all those types of things. There’s a lot of things that are important, and I wouldn’t say there’s one critical thing, but we’ve got to look at all of those factors.

In theory you want to find players who have the potential to make the First Team. When you’re building teams like this, you want them to be as competitive as possible, and in most cases each of the players you find have the potential to move up to the First Team. That’s going to be our focus and the driving force behind things as we put together the roster.

Q: One of the key elements of roster-building is going to be incorporating Academy players, are there players in the system that you are currently targeting to be part of the Revolution II next season?

CA: Absolutely. We plan on having anywhere from five to ten of our current U-19 players as part of the system and part of the training environment and getting minutes and contributing. Depending on the player, they’ll be contributing every game, and some players may be doing less, but we definitely will be using a core group of our current U-19s and obviously we’ll have players from the First Team that will come down and the rest of the roster will be made up of USL contract players.

Q: The Revolution have some players that are out on loan about to play in the USL Championship Playoffs, has it been good to see the progress players like Zach Herivaux and Brian Wright have made while out on loan at places like Legion FC?

CA: Yeah, anytime they’re on loan, they’re in professional environments where they have to fight to get playing time and succeed and that’s good for their development. Now, though, in theory we’ll have that locally and have them be able to more regularly train with the First Team and it just makes things cleaner, but certainly in the loans that we’ve executed in the time since we’ve been here, we feel like it’s been beneficial for the players and the organization.

Q: The club is getting ready pretty soon to open its new training facility, the $35 million investment the Kraft family has put in, what’s it going to mean to have the First Team, League One team and Academy all training side-by-side at the same facility moving forward?

CA: It just completes the development model. It helps us attract better players both to our Academy and our USL team and our First Team. In our mind, you need to have really good coaching and a high-quality player pool, so if you’re able to attract better players and have good coaching, in theory it’s going to breed success and help us be successful in all the things we’re trying to achieve.

Q: There are all kinds of ways to measure success for a team like the Revolution II. For you, what would a successful first year for the club look like?

CA: Completing our developmental model, creating an environment and a culture that helps these young players understand the tools that they need to be successful for their entire career. It’s just establishing that environment. Then the plan is over time developing players for the First Team, and you can never account for how quickly that will come to fruition, but we’re really excited about the opportunity and we’ve got some great things to look forward to.