By The Associated Press

Major League Soccer is looking around the Boston area for a place to build a soccer-only stadium for the New England Revolution so the team wouldn’t have to share its home with the NFL’s Patriots.

“If we’re able to achieve that in Boston, it will explode the importance of the team to the local community,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said Wednesday in a telephone interview from the World Cup in Hamburg.

Since its inception as one of the league’s charter members, the Revolution has shared its building – and its ownership – with the New England Patriots.

Robert Kraft and his family own the 68,756-seat Gillette Stadium and the Patriots.

“We’re happy at Gillette Stadium,” Revolution chief operating officer Brian Bilello said. “However, … if the right opportunity was presented to us to have a 20,000-seat soccer stadium – which would be great for our fans and great for creating a partnership between the Revolution and a community – we would certainly be open to exploring that.”

Garber said he expected that Kraft might be more reluctant to move out of his own building, but Kraft was interested enough to go to Germany to tour local soccer stadiums for ideas. Kraft had a number of tussles with local officials before reaching an agreement to build Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, across from the team’s old stadium.

“They haven’t asked us to do this. We’re asking them to do this,” Garber said. “It’s not just about what makes sense for them. It’s about how the team can become more important to its fans.”

MLS will be asking cities in the area to detail what “values” they could provide toward construction of a stadium. Garber said local contributions would be not just in the form of money and infrastructure but plans that would put the soccer stadium at the center of new development.

The commissioner said that new stadiums in Bridgeview, Ill., and Harrison, N.J., are the cornerstones of community growth. In Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas, Pizza Hut Park’s 17 fields have become a center for the state’s youth soccer leagues.

Five of the league’s 12 teams play in soccer-specific stadiums, two more are under construction and three others are in the pipeline. The Revolution is one of just four teams without plans for their own building.

The Revolution played in Foxboro Stadium from 1996 until Gillette Stadium opened in 2002. Foxboro Stadium was the site of the inaugural MLS Cup in 96 and another in 99; Gillette Stadium hosted the league’s 2002 title game.

“It has served as a great facility,” Garber said. “But as we look around the league at the soccer-specific stadiums, we think that the Revolution can increase their popularity and importance if they were play in a soccer stadium as opposed to being a tenant in Gillette Stadium.”

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AP sports writer Howard Ulman contributed to this story from Foxborough, Mass.

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