New England Revolution Looking to Limit Mistakes Against Union

"We've gone to the training ground and corrected a few of those situations, but it's just individuals in those moments have to be better."

Photo By J. Alexander Dolan

If the New England Revolution want to win the club’s third match of the MLS season, they will need to be stronger in the back.

Outside of the penalty conversion, all of the goals scored by the New York Red Bulls could have been prevented. There were too many miscommunications or mistakes at Red Bull Arena.

While head coach Caleb Porter believes that New England for the most part defended well, he acknowledged that the Revolution needed to limit mistakes moving forward.

“Like I said, we defended well box-to-box,” Porter said when asked by The Blazing Musket what the focus defensively has been in training this past week. “New York didn't get in many good situations to score, but the moments that they did get in situations to score we have to do better. Three of the four were individual mistakes that are easily correctable. We have shown film on that. We've gone to the training ground and corrected a few of those situations, but it's just individuals in those moments have to be better. It wasn't a bad team-defending performance, but three of the four goals we gave up were routine.”

The Philadelphia Union attack will put New England to the test. Philly has double the points that New England has and has tallied 22 goals scored this season. Daniel Gazdag has seven goals to lead the way for the Union with Julian Carranza (five) and Mikael Uhre (four) not far behind.

With the Revolution having plenty of experience against the Union in recent years, both Porter and center back Henry Kessler know what to expect when going up against Jim Curtin’s side.

“[Philadelphia’s] system is really clear,” Kessler said. “They play that 4-4-2 diamond. They've done that for years, two strikers and a 10, so they’ll get numbers in the box. Their wide midfielders get involved, serve early crosses from the outside back, so it's pretty clear what they are doing and they are pretty good at it. They’ll look to play in behind early, so we need to be ready for that. It's just pretty clear what they're doing. I don't think they deviate too much from it. They're pretty direct at times, and they've had a lot of experience doing so, so they've gotten pretty good at it. So, we should be ready for that.”

Outside backs will need to be ready and willing to block service into the box while Kessler and Xavier Arreaga will need to disrupt the attackers looking to convert. With crosses coming into the box, a large presence such as Jonathan Mensah or Dave Romney would be preferred but Mensah is recovering from an injury while Romney seems to be out of favor with Porter.

Once again the Revolution need to prove that they aren’t just going to roll over and silently trudge to what could be a merciful end to the 2024 season. They need to start picking up points and become a much more consistent team.