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.