(weeplay)

The New England Revolution have completed a deal to bring Argentine striker Gustavo Bou to Foxboro. Bou joins the team on a transfer fee between $6-7 million, per Ives Galarcep.



Bou last played at Tijuana, where he scored 10 goals and added 5 assists in the 2018/19 season, along with an additional goal and assist in Copa MX. Bou started his career with River Plate, one of the largest clubs in South America, but was unable to stick with the team, and spent time on loan with teams in Argentina and Ecuador before landing with Xolos.



What does this mean for the Revs? Basically, this is the second-best player to step foot in Gillette Stadium since Jermaine Jones (Carles Gil is on another planet). We’ve all seen how good Cristian Penilla is in MLS after not being able to sniff the field in Liga MX. Bou was able to maintain a starting spot with Tijuana for an extended period of time, and scored double digit goals in four seasons throughout his career in leagues that are much better than MLS. The Revs have so many quality pieces in the attack, but have been missing a consistently deadly striker since Taylor Twellman’s career was shortened (Saer Sene could have been the one, but we’ll talk about that another time). It’s the one piece in attack this Revs team is missing, as Carles Gil, Cristian Penilla, Diego Fagundez, midfield Juan Agudelo, and Justin Rennicks all look to be good MLS players. Bou as the finishing touch in that attack makes this Revs team potentially lethal. Getting a combined 7 goals out of JF Caicedo and Teal Bunbury is a borderline miracle, with Bunbury having 3 league goals and 3 league shots out for throws and Caicedo being sincerely the slowest player we’ve seen Blake Brettschneider.



This move shows a whole new direction for the Revs. This isn’t a no-name player from a team none of us have heard of. Tijuana and River are known commodities in the US. We’ve seen the players that teams like those develop and how smoothly they transition into MLS. This is also the earliest in a window that a signing has been announced in a long time. And it’s definitely the least secretive the Revs have been about transfer targets, allowing Bou to post from a club seat in Gillette Stadium as he watched a Rolling Stones concert. We all had just hesitation about Bruce actually changing the process of bringing players in, but he’s done it. He’s made the Krafts rethink how they invest in this team, and there’s nothing negative to say about that.



Bruce Arena has nailed signings throughout his MLS career, and not just the Keane signings. Stefan Ishizaki, Marcelo Sarvas, Juninho, and Sebastian Lletget were all high quality MLS players that Bruce Arena dug up in one way or another. Bruce gets this league probably better than anyone else does, and that’s something we have to take into consideration with any decision he makes.

