With Full Week of Training, New England Revolution Ready for Chicago

"But for me, this week, to have four full days of training, that's going to mean everything for us, just to kind of clean everything up."

Photo By John McGloughlin

The New England Revolution have been quite busy as of late.

After their fourth straight loss in MLS (0-4) New England completed a stretch that saw them play eight matches in 26 days. Head coach Caleb Porter highlighted how the team has had minimal time (if any at all) to train during the busy stretch.

“We haven't trained,” Porter said after New England’s loss to FC Cincinnati. “For three and a half weeks, we haven't trained. Not even one day. The training days we've had are walkthroughs because the guys are still recovering. So, for sure, lack of training, building those habits. If you don't train, you lose the little details and the habits. Tactically, you can move magnets, show video and walkthrough, and they're organized, but just being cleaner. You need habits through training.”

With no mid-week match as Concacaf Champions Cup play took a week off due to a FIFA International Window, New England had plenty of time to train. Porter mentioned that they essentially worked one everything a soccer team could throughout the week.

“Everything,” Porter replied when asked by The Blazing Musket about what areas of the game New England worked on during training. “There's a lot of good, but also I feel like there's a lot in every phase that we can work on. The bottom line is, in terms of results, in terms of goals scored, in terms of goals conceded, all those metrics, we are underperforming. I do think that there's some good in all those phases that gives me a lot of encouragement that we are close to scoring a lot of goals, we are close to not conceding goals, and we are close to winning. But for me, this week, to have four full days of training, that's going to mean everything for us, just to kind of clean everything up.”

Something else that Porter mentioned after the loss to Cincy was that New England might have a mentality issue. This also seemed to be an area that Porter had Revolution players work on during training.

“We worked yesterday specifically on winning duels. I would call it a mentality day, and the guys got after it,” the head coach added. “We had three players that had blood coming from somewhere, whether it's a nose or a little nick or whatever. So, that was a good day, because they got after it. I think they needed to fight a little bit and get after it and get bloodied a little bit and just work on the mentality and winning duels. Then today, we worked tactically the whole day, an hour and a half just purely on tactics on both sides of the ball.”

Saturday’s match is as much of a must-win as the fifth game of the season can be. New England doesn’t have to worry about having played a mid-week match and was able to work on some of its weaknesses throughout the week. It was a reset that a team desperately needed after such a poor start in the league.

But if the Revolution have another poor start on Saturday, there will be no excuses for Porter or the club. If hitting the reset button didn’t fix New England’s issues, it’s hard to imagine what will.