What Can We Expect from Leo Campana?

The Revs made a move for the goal scorer we all said they needed, is Campana the right one?

Photo Courtesy of MLS

The New England Revolution have had a busy offseason so far, making a flurry of moves in a bid to revamp the team for a 2025 season that has to be better than 2024 for Revs fans and the team’s head coach, Caleb Porter. Possibly the one move everyone following this team agreed on going into the offseason had to be made was to find a way to replace Giacomo Vrioni.

The Revs took the step of finding his replacement first; it remains to be seen if Vrioni will be moved before the season begins. In a startling Festivus Miracle, we’ve had reports that Clubs in Europe are actually interested in acquiring Vrioni for a transfer fee. It may be possible these Clubs have no international scouting department or a Wyscout account frozen in time where it’s still 2022, but that is neither here nor there. If someone wants Vrioni in 2025, they can have him!

The move for Campana and the possible departure of Vrioni also gave Curt Onalfo a brief respite from criticism for his questionable math about Vrioni’s goal scoring record. Onalfo made reference to Vrioni scoring six goals his first year in New England, nine in year two and simply extrapolated from there that he could progress further and score 12-18 goals in 2025. Aside from the fact that’s not really how it works and the afront to the number 15, nothing in Vrioni’s play suggests this is possible.

Vrioni simply needed to be replaced as the team’s main center forward option. Onalfo deserves credit for his public pronouncement of confidence in Vrioni, while working in private to replace him. The public sham of blind faith may have saved the Revs a few thousand in MLS Crypto to get Campana in.

The Revs may have overpaid for Campana but it’s important to remember they sent Inter Miami GAM or general allocation money, which is in fact, not really money. It’s money in the same sense that arcade coins are money, you can exchange real money for GAM but then you can only spend it in the MLS arcade through salary pay downs and sending it to other teams in MLS. This is not money that could have been spent on a South American striker from a South American Club. Is overpaying in something with limited value that you have a lot of anyway a big concern? No. You can’t even trade GAM on Coinbase.

So what then are the Revs getting in Campana besides another player with an Italian sounding name who actually isn’t Italian? A decent but not massive upgrade over Vrioni. Let’s look at the numbers.

We’re going to compare Vrioni in all of his time with the Revs to Campana’s pre-Messi time with Inter Miami. This is only fair, we need to strip out the period of time in which Campana played with Messi and friends because the Revs will not have a similar caliber attacking force in 2025.

Campana joined Miami for the beginning of the 2022 season and Messi debuted for them in August of 2023 in MLS play. In that period, Campana played 2,585 minutes across 42 games scoring 15 goals. This was not a good Miami team, they picked up just 1.16 points per game across a 57 game period. In those 57 games they scored 69 goals. Campana was on the field 50% of the time and contributed 22 percent of the team’s total goals scored.

Vrioni had his Revs debut on July 23, 2022, against Caleb Porter’s Columbus Crew (who missed the playoffs that year) and through the end of 2024 played 3,799 minutes in 67 games while providing 16 goals. The Revs have gained 1.23 points per game since Vrioni’s arrival, essentially making them a fringe playoff team in that time. The Revs scored 111 goals in 84 games in this period. Vrioni was also on the field 50% of the time and contributed 14% of the team goals while he was out there.

Campana pretty clearly contributed more to his team’s goal scoring than Vrioni while playing on a slightly worse team.

How would pre-Messi Campana fair in a representative 28-game season wherein he averaged 80 minutes played per game? Based on his rate of a goal every 172 minutes, he would be projected to score 13 goals. Vrioni’s rate of a goal every 237 minutes would project out to only 9.5 goals in a similar projected season.

That’s a solid improvement and if you account for the fact that Campana may not have peaked yet and could possibly play a bit more than 2,240 minutes this season, maybe Campana could hit 15 or 16 goals.

Onalfo, by the way, was off the mark when he said of Campana.

“His goalscoring record is basically every 90 minutes, he scores a goal,” Onalfo said.

Not sure where Onalfo found this, even looking at his entire MLS career, he scored once every 160 minutes. Evidently 160 is “basically” 90. No need to oversell Campana, 160 minutes per goal is clearly much better than Vrioni’s inept 237.

A good center forward delivers more than just goals, he creates goals for his teammates and participates in build-up play as well. Here we find less of a gap between Vrioni and pre-Messi Campana.

Since Vrioni’s arrival, the Revs have had 49.9 percent possession in MLS and averaged 135 touches per game in the attacking third. Vrioni only averaged 10.5 touches in the attacking third, a total of just 7.8 percent of the team’s average. Campana’s 10 touches per game in the attacking third accounted for a similar, 7 percent, of Miami’s 143. This suggests a similar amount of time on the ball for each, Pre-Messi Miami also had slightly more possession, 50.4%, than the Revs.

Campana also only touched the ball 2.73 times per game in the opponent’s penalty area, compared to Vrioni getting a touch in that same space 4.31 times per game. In terms of efficiency of goals scored per touch in both the attacking third and penalty area, it suggests Campana can do more with less than Vrioni. But it also suggests Campana won’t be a drastic departure in how helpful he is to his team’s build-up play and the 2024 Revs struggled mightily with the very concept of build-up play, let alone its execution.

And what of the ability to provide assists, an area Vrioni offered very little in? How little you ask?

He had two assists in 3,799 minutes, an astonishingly low figure. You would think a striker would provide at least that many on accident in that many minutes. Campana checks in a little better as he had three assists in his 2,585 Pre-Messi Miami minutes.

Assists also require the player your passing to and their ability to finish the chance. Key passes simply measure passes that lead directly to a shot. Campana set up a teammate for a shot with a pass 21 times in those 2,585 minutes. Vrioni somehow managed to do that only 19 times in 1,214 MORE minutes than Campana. Safe to say, we shouldn’t expect double-digit assists in 2025 from Campana but he should definitely set up his teammates more often than Vrioni.

All in all, the Revs have brought in an improvement over Vrioni. Campana makes this team better purely from his own production of goals. And maybe his more threatening presence will open up opportunities for the Revs talented attacking talent behind him as well.

The team has to generate more chances and increase their goal scoring efficiency from 2024 in 2025 if they are going to get anywhere near the playoffs. Campana can help in those areas just as clearly as Vrioni cannot.