New England Revolution Focused On Playing Their Game

“I think the main thing is just playing our game. I think when you look back at most of our games, it's kind of us beating ourselves rather than the other way around.

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

The New England Revolution are focused on what they control ahead of their matchup on Saturday against the New York Red Bulls.

Themselves.

While New York has a new head coach in Sandro Schwarz, the Red Bull press still strives to put opponents in a vise grip. While they struggled against Inter Miami last weekend, most teams do and New York has the attacking talent of Lewis Morgan, Emil Forsberg, and Dante Vanzeir.

When asked about expectations for the Red Bulls, Revolution head coach Caleb Porter turned the attention back to his squad.

“I think we have to be more focused on our mentality,” Porter said. “That was, last week, a point of emphasis: ‘Let’s work on our execution.’ In the game of football, if you do what you want to do, that's half the equation or more, and I thought we did that in the latter stages of the first half and the entire second half, and I think that was a big reason we won the game.”

New England seemed to have more control of the game against the struggling Chicago Fire. While the question still remains if that was due to playing a poor opponent, New York provides Porter and his players an opportunity to show that the 1-0 win wasn’t a fluke.

Youngster Esmir Bajraktarevic believes that building off of the victory will be showing that the Revolution can continue to play their game.

“I think the main thing is just playing our game,” he said. “I think when you look back at most of our games, it's kind of us beating ourselves rather than the other way around. So, it's kind of just making sure that we're doing the best that we can, and the results will come.”

Mistakes have been costly for New England this season. Whether it be failing to put a man lying down behind the wall on a free kick or failing to clear a ball teams have been able to get one over on the Revs.

With the Revs struggling at times against the press — most recently evident in the season opener against D.C. United — Saturday’s match will be a good test to see if New England has actually solved its early season issues.