New England Revolution Preparing For Unique Challenge of Playing at Yankee Stadium

Playing soccer at a baseball field is always fun

Photo By John McGloughlin

The New England Revolution head back on the road after two straight home games and get to take part in the unique challenge of playing New York City FC at Yankee Stadium.

While the stadium is great for catching nine innings, playing 90 minutes of soccer is a completely different story. The pitch is compact and playing in the outfield of a baseball diamond provides for some awkward angles.

“It’s different,” head coach Caleb Porter said. “Every game is a little different, but this one is kind of interesting from the standpoint of the field, the pitch size, the orientation of it, the outfield. Yankee Stadium, it’s kind of a strange orientation. It’s a very tight pitch. It’s the smallest pitch in the league. Some of your decisions in terms of how you’re going to play and who you’re going to select to play need to be based on the conditions and understanding that it’s a very tight pitch.”

One area of the field that will be more compacted is the midfield. Yankee Stadium sees a lot of teams opt for direct play as it can be tough to play through a cluttered middle of the pitch.

New England has players all over the pitch who will get to experience the wonders of Yankee Stadium for the first time. Ignatius Ganago, Luca Langoni, Alhassan Yusuf, Ilay Feingold, Mamadou Fofana, and Brayan Ceballos all have the potential to get introduced to the outfield where Aaron Judge graces his presence.

While Jackon Yueill has played against NYCFC on the road, playing at Yankee Stadium wasn’t a constant as he spent his entire career in the Western Conference prior to joining the Revolution.

The MLS veteran knows how difficult it is to play at the stadium.

“It just feels compact,” Yueill said. “Definitely, the angles of everything are just a little bit off, so you have to get as used to that as much as possible in the warmups. The ball rolls a little differently, but it’s still soccer. Both teams have to deal with it. Obviously, it's their [New York City FC] home field, so they deal with it a lot more. But it's about getting used to it as quickly as possible, finding as much space as you can in that narrow area. There are a lot of opportunities for crosses, so it's a thing that both teams can utilize, be hurt by, and take advantage of. It's something that I think we will talk about this week and try to prepare everyone who hasn’t been in those situations. I think the team is ready for that challenge.”

The challenge New England has to face is strengthened as New York City has had a solid start to the 2025 campaign. NYCFC drew with Inter Miami and was also able to defeat Orlando City. The club’s only loss is to one of the best teams in the Western Conference, LAFC.

Alonso Martinez leads the team with two goals and Mitja Ilenic is another attacker that could cause problems for New England’s back line. Additionally, Keaton Parks continues to patrol the midfield for the Pigeons.

“Like every team, they’re talented,” Porter said. “They have a lot of technical players. They’ve lost a few guys from last year, but they just got their first win at home against Orlando [last weekend]. I thought they played really well. They came out with a lot of energy in the match. They’ve been a good team in this league over the last several years.”

The Revolution will enter Saturday desperate for a win. The club has yet to secure three points and has also failed to find the back of the net.

Just when it seemed like things couldn’t get worse for Revs fans, it was announced that Leo Campana will miss three to four weeks with a hamstring strain. While the outlook might seem bleak for New England at the moment, Porter reminded his squad to trust the process.

“I think just overall we need to stick to our process, and we need to stay in our reality,” the head coach said. “Our reality is an honest one, it’s an objective one. It’s a reality where we look at everything and look at the film, and we understand the good and we understand what needs to improve. So, I think that’s really important and that gives us perspective on where we’re at. We’re three games into a season, and we have a bunch of new players. We need time.”

Porter also took some time to praise New England for its effort in the first three matches of the season. Still, the head coach notes that New England needs to improve.

“Yet, with a short amount of time, we’ve done a lot of good things,” he said. “We lost to two teams that are No. 1 and No. 2 in the East. Philadelphia beat Cincinnati and Orlando, and they scored eight goals. They’re a very good team, and we were right there. We’re not far off, we’re close. We need to improve the attack. There were a lot of moments in the game where we’re in good positions that won’t show up on the scoresheet, won’t show up in the analytics. We need to be better in those moments, getting shots off, making better decisions, and being more technical, having more precision in those moments. We were in good spots. We want to be in more good spots, but we were in enough good spots to create more in that game. We’ll keep working on that. The detail is the most important thing. When you look at the detail, for me, scoring goals comes down to the final third and it comes down to precision. It comes down to the final details. We’ll continue to work on that. I’m very confident in this group. I’m very confident that we’re close. I know this will turn. Like I said, it’s a very young season, it’s a new team, and everybody internally knows that. We’re all on the same page, front office, owners, everybody. We’re all on the same page.”