Catanese: Making the Playoffs is Not An Expectation or a Success, Or is it?

Merely qualifying for the MLS Postseason is not where the Revs were supposed to be aiming for in 2025 based on where they wanted to be in 2024.

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

This is not to pick on Caleb Porter or Curt Onalfo who have done a lot of good work this offseason to get the Revs ready for 2025…which the team probably needed more of last year but I digress.

We know the myriad of reasons why the Revs struggled last year and weren’t able to find their form from the first half of 2023 before Bruce Arena’s departure. Last year was billed as a win-now/run-it-back style campaign with largely the same roster and it backfired. The team did an about face this year and have an will have an entirely new starting lineup surrounding captain Carles Gil then they did to start last year.

Last year the expectations were to get back to near the top of the East like they were in the middle of 2023 and I see no reason why that should be tabled despite last season’s failure. That’s what was advertised and promised and to say the Revs under-delivered would be putting it lightly.

I’m paraphrasing Porter from Thursday’s media availability, but the quotes about getting an early road win, then an early home win that eventually lead to consistent winning and the goal of making the playoffs are…whelming? Porter’s not wrong, the Revs obviously have to make the playoffs to win MLS Cup, they don’t let you into the postseason as a 14-seed in the East. But I am neither confident, excited, nor disappointed by any of this coach speak, it’s just kind of there.

“For me the goal is the playoffs, and that’s not the end goal, but that’s an important goal for us this year, is to get in the playoffs.” Porter said regarding the team’s goals. “That leads to us hopefully being a contender for MLS Cup.”

I understand that asking a team that turned over literally the entire starting lineup from last year save for arles Gil to immediately click and be say a Top 4 team in the East right away is asking a lot. I get the realistic expectations the team has this year and the lack of trust and goodwill they have coming off a 14th place finish.

I mean, no one at the vaunted expert panel at MLS Soccer dot com thinks the Revs are going make the playoffs…except Miss Antonella Gonzalez who already knows Leo Campana is bagging all the goals now that he’s not playing behind that old guy in Miami. No finishing ninth is not making the playoffs, that’s the play-in game, sorry Miss Kaylyn Kyle. The rest of you gentlemen…the North remembers.

Making the playoffs in MLS is not an accomplishment. Not for this team that has been starved for success of any kind let alone silverware and just four years removed from it’s best season ever. Aside from 2008 when they won the SuperLiga, of course.

Since the Revs 2014 loss in the MLS Cup Final, they have advanced out of the bracket proper once - that magical COVID run in 2020 into the ECF against eventual champs Columbus coached by Caleb Porter. Actually that year is all of the Revs playoff wins (including Bou’s walkoff thunderbastard in the play-in vs Montreal) occurred in that year.

Every other year the Revs have made the playoffs they have been bounced in the play-in game or their appropriate first game/series…feel like I’ve looked this up several times in the last decade and it’s still an impressive display of futility. Yes the Shield was tremendous, but one run as an eight seed is all the postseason success the Revs have in the post MVLee/Jermaine Jones/Turner/Bou/Buksa era.

Maybe it makes perfect sense for the Revs to do exactly what Coach Porter is saying…take things one game at time and build up into contention. Especially after that old guy in Miami finally retires cause he can still do it on a cold day in Kansas City. Maybe we should forget, or forgive, the circumstances of Coach Porter’s hiring and expectations of last year.

Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect the Revs to win a playoff series this year since they hardly ever do it anyway. Surely spending lavishly on new signings like Campana, Feingold, Gagano, Langoni, etc., and combining that with a two-time MLS Cup winning head coach is a recipe for instant success.

2023 was a pretty low point in morale, and very little that occurred in 2024 has done anything to repair that. Regardless of if Porter and the Revs keep their original promise of being a contending team in the East this year…this team and fanbase need something that resembles confidence out of 2025. I’ll let you determine what that is in the comments.

But making the playoffs is not an accomplishment in MLS, not when 60% of the league is making at least the play-in game every year. If you want me and the rest of the fanbase to remember where this team was under Bruce Arena, I would start by equaling his best playoff run.

And I wouldn’t plot out a three-year plan to make that happen. Cause in a few months we’re going to be halfway through a rebuilding project that wasn’t supposed to occur.

Unless making the playoffs is an improvement for a team that has only advanced once in the postseason in the last decade, and missed it outright half the time in that span.

Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe I shouldn’t have believed the Porter and Onalfo and the Revs going into last year.

Because I have no reason based on last year to believe the meager goals the team has set for this year, let alone the lofty goals they set for themselves last year.

Have my beloved Eagles and Huskies skewed my championship meter…no, no it’s my soccer team that’s wrong.