{"id":27518,"date":"2014-08-27T00:29:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T04:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=27518"},"modified":"2014-09-19T14:06:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T18:06:13","slug":"jones-sold-on-new-england-by-davies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=27518","title":{"rendered":"Jones ‘Sold’ on New England by Davies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. \u2013 Leave it to the local kid to sell the prospect of playing in New England to the summer\u2019s most vaunted free agent.<\/p>\n

Prior to MLS awarding Jermaine Jones to the local XI on Sunday, Revolution striker and Boston College alum Charlie Davies had a feeling that the U.S. International may be headed to Gillette Stadium. So naturally, Davies did his best to convince the U.S. International that Foxborough \u2013 and by extension, Boston \u2013 was the perfect destination.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be a fool not to,\u201d Davies said with a smile on Tuesday. \u201cI just told him that this is a great area to live in, I grew up in the area, so I love this city and I love the area. You can\u2019t really find that much better in the US, if you\u2019re not talking about any cities in California (where Jones has a home).\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies told the media on Tuesday that he originally linked up with Jones four years ago, and has remained in contact since. And once the possibility of playing on the same club arose, the Manchester, N.H. native held nothing back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said the club has been great,\u201d Davies said. \u201cI\u2019ve been treated so well here. Everyone gets along, and I think is it\u2019s probably the best locker room I\u2019ve been a part of from player 1 to player 30. Everyone\u2019s tight. (We have) a good group of guys, and the coaching staff has been good. So I told him it\u2019s the place to be, and I think he\u2019d really enjoy playing with the players that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones did have one concern about playing in Foxborough: the artificial surface, which the veteran midfielder wasn\u2019t accustomed to after playing the entirety of his career on grass in Germany and Turkey.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked with Charlie, he\u2019s a good friend,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd the word he gave me back was that it\u2019s good (here). A lot of people were talking about the turf pitch, and I asked him (about it). He told me it\u2019s a good pitch. It\u2019s still turf, but you can play on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones said he tested out the Gillette Stadium surface himself on Monday, and deemed it \u201ca good turf\u201d during Tuesday\u2019s press conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will have no problems playing on that pitch,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n

Now that Jones, who trained with the club on Tuesday, is officially in the fold, Davies said that the entire club locker room will benefit from the veteran midfielder\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the kind of guy that when you bring him to a team, not only does he raise the level of the players in the midfield, but everyone, I mean from player 1 to player 30,\u201d Davies said. \u201cEveryone\u2019s picked up the energy, and I think more is expected of you because you have to raise your level of quality when you have a player like that on the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked whether Jones\u2019 introduction makes the sixth-place Revolution an instant contender, Davies smiled, but was careful not to, as he said, \u201cput his foot in his mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to get ahead of ourselves, but I think we can do big things this season,\u201d Davies said. \u201c(The) playoffs are something that\u2019s very attainable, and I think we\u2019ll have to take it game by game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once Charlie Davies heard that his friend Jermaine Jones was heading to MLS, the BC alum did his best to convince him to come to Foxboro. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[847,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Davies-Jones-1.png?fit=500%2C260&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27535,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27518\/revisions\/27535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}