Aljaz Ivacic's Shifting Influence Helping Revs

The Revs limited haul of points so far in 2025 could be even more dire if not for the strong play in goal.

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

The New England Revolution have struggled to score goals all season and have even struggled for long stretches to even look like a team capable of scoring. They are seven games into the season and have no goals from open play, a trend that simply cannot continue if they want to return to the playoffs in 2025. There are two key factors that have enabled the team to gain seven points so far this season: a balance of play heavily tipped towards defending and Aljaz Ivacic’s efforts in front of goal.

That’s a sharp turnaround from 2024 when the Revs were historically bad in preventing opposition goals and the play of Ivacic was overrated by the team’s coaching staff and many others following the team. Ivacic was heralded as a “top 5” or even “best goalkeeper in the league” at various points last season while performing at a more or less average level in terms of shot stopping among MLS goalkeepers.

This season so far, Ivacic has looked and been backed up statistically as above average. After this latest round of games, Ivacic ranks 11th in MLS in the incredibly poorly named statistic that is post-shot expected goals minus goals conceded per 90 minutes. It measures how many goals a keeper would have been expected to allow based on where the shot arrives on target minus how many he actually allowed. Shots Saved+ or something similar would be a better name.

But we’re not here to name names! Ivacic has so far been expected to have conceded 9.1 goals from shots on target while conceding only seven. That’s plus 2.1 goals to the good and over seven games it comes out to .30 per ninety minutes. That’s clear improvement from 2024 when he ranked 28th out of 32 goalkeepers in this metric and had a per ninety minutes rate of -.11. There were only 17 goalkeepers in 2024 with a positive ranking; this season there are 25 so far and Ivacic ranks ahead of 14 of them.

This is the part of the article where we are required to mention sample size. It has only been seven games so it’s possible this is just a particularly strong run of good form for Ivacic that happens to be at the beginning of the season. And if that’s the case, it’s certainly well timed and the Revs will have to take it considering the problems going forward and the bus parking in the second half approach the team is taking.

It should also be mentioned that the Revs overall defensive improvement has meant Ivacic has only faced 4.29 shots on target per game in 2025, a noticeable and surely well appreciated decline from the 6.32 shots on target per game the team faced in 2024. The Revs were dead last in this category last year and have improved to 14th so far in 2025.

Perhaps the donuts should be upgraded to breakfast sandwiches.

Ivacic was criticized, rightly, for late reactions on a number of occasions last season. So far in 2025 though he has only come in for individual criticism on one of the seven goals conceded when he was frozen on his line for a goal at the post he was covering.

Another point of criticism was his reluctance to come off his line and intervene in play higher up the field. This has also been an area of improvement in 2025. Just in watching the games so far it has seemed that he’s been more willing to leave his line and has already had multiple goal saving moments from these situations.

The stats back this up as well.

In 2024, Ivacic had just 10 defensive actions outside the penalty area in 25 games. This year already he has five in just seven games. That’s more in line with his career average of .61 defensive actions outside the area per game, as it’s at .71 so far this year and was just .40 in 2024. He’s also increased his average distance from goal on all defensive interventions in 2025 up to 13.5 yards from just 10.5 yards in 2024.

It’s possible Ivacic was overcorrecting in 2024 from the worst season of his MLS career in 2023. In 2023, Ivacic had well above his career averages on interventions outside the area and distance from goal of his interventions and the worst season of his career in terms of post shot expected goals minus goals allowed. That may have given him moments of pause in crucial moments when goalkeepers have to be decisive in the 2024 season.

Maybe the consistent outpouring of hyperbolic praise from the coaches in 2024 has had a residual effect in 2025. But that remains to be seen, it may be too soon to think this psychological ploy has worked and subsequently back Max Urruti to lead the team in scoring in 2026, for example.

We have also seen another adjustment with Ivacic in 2025 in regards to his reduced utilization in build-up play compared to last season. The team has also increased how often it goes long on goal kicks in 2025 from 2024. Remember the high praise given to Ivacic being “like an extra field player” for his skills with the ball at his feet? Expectations of his ability to influence the attacking play of the team seems to have been tempered this year.

The Revs have gone long from goal kicks 68.2 percent of the time in 2025, third highest in the league and an increase from 2024’s 57.3 percent which was fifth highest in MLS that year. Even only in games played by Ivacic in 2024, they opted to go long 62.9 percent of the time from goal kicks. So either way, it’s an increase over last season.

Ivacic has also been less involved in open play, attempting only 15.3 live passes per game in 2025, a 27 percent reduction from last season’s 21 per game. Last season he attempted a combined 14.72 short or medium passes per game; that has been reduced to 11.14 so far in 2025.

Pass completion percentage is most useful when assessing goalkeepers, given the potential heightened degree of issues caused by passes they don’t complete. His overall pass completion percentage in 2025 so far is 65.3, slightly below last season but just slightly above his career average of 63.1 and well above his career worst mark of 52 percent from that disastrous 2023 season mentioned earlier. Likewise, his long pass completion percentage is down to 38.5 percent from 2024’s career best of 41.1 percent but right in line with his career average and, again, safely above the 34.9 percent from 2023, his second lowest career mark in that category.

Mix that all together and what we’re seeing and what the stats lay out for us is a goalkeeper who’s protecting the goal with more success in 2025 than his first year with the team, a positive adjustment to where he intervenes with his defensive actions and a reigning in of his utilization in build-up play. Last Saturday’s game was his best performance of the season and his two best games in terms of post shot expected goals minus goals allowed have come in the two games won by the Revs this season.

If this is just a hot streak of strong performances, it’s incredibly well timed as it has bought the Revs time to get their attacking play together and almost certainly saved Caleb Porter his job for the time being. It shouldn’t be expected to last the entire season as Ivacic’s season long performances have been mixed in his MLS career so far.

The attacking play is going to have carry the team at some point this season. They’ve already relied plenty on Ivacic to cover for their goal-scoring ineptitude in just seven games already.