What Was That?! - Your 2024 Revolution Post-Mortem

Breaking Down the Revs Disastrous 2024

Photo J. Alexander Dolan

For the past several seasons I have put together a Revolution “post mortem”, taking cues (read: kinda stealing?) from Matt Doyle’s excellent series. I highly recommend you read his post-mortem of the Revs and then come back here for what (I hope) will be a deeper dive into the Revolution’s season.

In previous years, he would begin those articles with a gif summarizing each team’s season. While it appears he no longer does that in the modern iteration, I will carry that tradition on for the Revolution:

Arc of the Season

The MLS Season is long, and often teams don’t finish like they started. Things can begin hot, then cool off, only to re-ignite towards the fall. Or vice-versa. Or, truly, any combination of ups and downs.

I like to take a plot of the 5-game rolling average points per game and plot it over time. That gives us a broad, 50,000-foot view of any trends in results and quality over the course of the season.

And the view is…well it’s not great. The Revolution spent the vast majority of the season in a continuous 5-game skid, only breaching the league average points-per-game of 1.38 for 5 weeks in the summer.

New England found themselves in a unique position in February. The Revolution spent the back half of 2023 in a downward spiral, involving swapping coaches twice, losing start players, and under media scrutiny.

And yet also found themselves with enough stored points to earn a coveted 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup berth. They entered “CCC” with yet another new head coach, their 4th in under a year, but with high hopes for the 2024 season.

And then fell flat, immediately.

Whether due to the change in coaching, tactics, injuries, roster construction, fixture congestion (due to the aforementioned CCC berth), or Giacomo Vrioni getting a red card 21 minutes into their first game, things didn’t go as fans had hoped. New England lost each of their first four league games for the first time since 2001.

Part of this, no doubt, was due to a rotating door of goalkeepers in the wake of Djordje Petrovic’s transfer to Chelsea. Both Earl Edwards and import Henrich Ravas got minutes in net for Caleb Porter’s New England Revolution. Neither were able to provide the same level of elite shot-stopping of their predecessors.

Data from March 2024

Eventually, Aljaz Ivacic was brought in to round out the GK room, and he performed better… to start. His acrobatic saves brought some confidence but as the season wore on, he found himself out of position or caught flat-footed all too often.

Turning our attention to the attack, New England entered the year with two natural center-forwards on the roster, an injured Bobby Wood and Giacomo Vrioni. That turned out to be a relatively fruitless pairing. The Revs would get just a combined two goals and one assist from the duo on the roster through the first 18 matches.

Then - June. Ahhh June. When the world shifted from dreary and black-and-white to vibrant and colorful.

In the month of June, New England won four of five matches - two of those wins came on the road. If we add in the game against Atlanta United on July 3, New England earned three points in five of six matches over that stretch.

Giacomo Vrioni scored 5 times during that 6 game stretch. Things were looking good.

And then that stopped happening. Injuries began piling up and the carriage turned back into a pumpkin. Vrioni would score just twice more from July 6 through the end of the season.

Tactics:

To say that Caleb Porter wasn’t responsive to the results on the field when formulating his team’s tactics wouldn’t be entirely fair. To say that he was much too slow to make adjustments, however, would be fair.

New England began the year playing a wide, possession-heavy, ball-control style. On paper it made sense, limit your oppositions touches (and therefore scoring opportunities) and take advantage of your former MVP string-puller in Carles Gil.

But that overlooked one, rather important, thing. If you’re going to play with possession and build from the back, you must build towards something.

Despite the significant resources poured into the attacking end of the field, there simply weren’t any reliable scoring options that could win their 1v1 battles. While Carles Gil remained near the top of the “key-passes” charts (a count of passes leading to a shot attempt), New England failed to capitalize on scoring opportunities.

And with no focal point, no 1v1 winning players, and at times no natural center forward on the field, it began to feel rudderless.

Possession Data from OPTA

This is a chart of every MLS team’s possession percentage (courtesy of the OPTA analyst) in “Zone 18”. AKA right in front of the opposition’s goal.

Anyone who watched the Revs this year knows that they struggled to work the ball into the opposing penalty area. And the stats bear that out. No team had a smaller percentage of possession in Zone 18 than New England did, in 2024.

So What Went Right:

Click here for an audio representation

OK, that’s a joke, but only sort of. There’s not much to write home about, by way of superlatives, unless you like the types of records that include the words “worst” and “fewest”.

If there are positives to examine, I think it likely has to do with individual performances and future potential.

Injuries to Dylan Borrero, Nacho Gil, and Thomas Chancalay opened the door for 19-year-old academy-grown winger Esmir Bajraktarevic to increase his involvement in 2024. He mostly did so with aplomb.

He increased his minutes from 493 to 1,990 year-over-year and contributed three goals and three assists. His performances earned him the attention of the Bosnia and Herzegovina National Team, prompting him to file for a nationality switch from the USMNT.

While we’re on the topic of young players, Peyton Miller got his first pro minutes in 2024, filling in for a recently traded DeJuan Jones.

Miller became the youngest Homegrown player to sign a first-team contract last season and earned meaningful minutes in 2024 at just 16 years old. His pace up the flanks and the quality of his crosses are well beyond his years.

He still has a ways to go before he might be considered a top full-back in MLS. His decision-making was, at times, lacking. That said, it’s absolutely a positive sign to see him contribute and not seem out of place at such a young age.

Best Stat?

Kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but… away wins? The Revs captured all three points away from the “friendly” confines of Gillette Stadium four times this season which isn’t half bad assuming you also pick up some draws on the road (they didn’t) and win your home games (they didn’t).

Still, it’s just the 3rd time since 2015 they managed four or more wins on the road in MLS.

Another positive is that even in a bad season, fan attendance is up!

The ability to see Messi in person set single-game attendance records all across MLS this season, but league attendance has been steadily growing over the past several years and that’s no different in New England.

The Revs managed to gain some attention, and didn’t show much on-field to keep that attention. But it seems Messi will be back next year, so that presents another opportunity to convert a few casual sports-goers into repeat customers.

What Went Wrong?

Oh boy. How much time do you have?

Let’s just hit the high-level stuff.

For starters, tactically, New England often relied on possession but struggled to create dangerous attacking moments from that possession. When the Revs did manage to find space, they were frequently either not on the same page or incapable of putting their chances on target.

Defensively they paid for that possession as well as it pushed the outside backs (and oftentimes a centerback) further up the pitch. If the ball turned over, they were relatively easy to defeat on the counter-attack. And when they weren’t in possession, they were disorganized and slow to react defensively.

All of that adds up to very few goals scored (least goals in MLS this year) and high goals against (3rd highest goals conceded in league history).

Only very briefly did they get any sort of goalscoring momentum going. This is a rolling 5-game average of goals scored (in green) vs goals conceded (in red). They managed a decent spell in the month of June, with over 1.5g/gm that month. It also appears as though they regained that momentum in August/September, but that region is being heavily buoyed by a 5-0 win at Montreal.

The remainder of the season sits comfortably in the “less than one goal a game” territory. And it’s not like they didn’t have chances! …Oh wait, yes it is.

Per FBRef, they generated the lowest expected goals of any team in MLS this season.

They experienced a negative goal differential in every game this season except six. xGD doesn’t necessarily indicate how a game went. For instance - of those six games, they managed to win just once. But when it’s overwhelmingly negative like this…something might be up.

It’s worth noting that while the Revolution did string together five wins in six games (from weeks 15-20) they lost the xG battle in each of those contests. There was a brief moment where it seemed like that was the start of a turnaround - but the underlying stats disagreed. In a way, the results in June were just bologna in the middle of the sadness-sandwich that was the Revs 2024 season.

Worst Stat?

For a team that (for much of the season) wanted to dominate possession and break down their opponents with the ball, they really struggled to possess the ball in dangerous areas on the field.

We touched on this already briefly, above. The Revs ended the season with the ninth-highest average possession in the league and the 12th most touches. But they did very little of that in their opponent’s penalty area.

Per data from FBRef, they had the sixth fewest touches in the attacking penalty area in MLS and, as a function of total touches, the third lowest touch rate in the attacking penalty area of any MLS club this year.

While they did find some success when playing direct and in moments of transition at times this year, they did so too infrequently. Whether tactics or personnel, New England wasn’t nearly dangerous enough in possession.

High Point

This was, surprisingly, kind of a difficult decision. The Revolution didn’t have very many successes this season but they did manage a handful of nice performances on the year.

In the end, I opted for their 5-0 blowout victory over C.F. Montreal, up north of the border, on August 24.

For starters, it marks the only multi-goal victory the Revolution managed all season. And not just 2-0, or 3-1. Five goals on the road is a big deal. It’s not quite a “touchdown” worth, but hey a field goal/safety combo is nothing to sneeze at.

The win was also one of just four shut-outs in 2024 for Caleb Porter’s men and saw the debut of record-signing Luca Langoni.

Honorable mentions:

2-1 victory at FC Cincinnati

3-2 victory vs Vancouver Whitecaps

Low Point

This was also a tough task. Much like pointing at the lowest point of the Marianas Trench — it’s all pretty low.

Do you go with their brutal 9-2 aggregate defeat in the Concacaf Champions Cup against Club America? Or perhaps starting the season with an early red-card and a 4-0 road loss to eventual also-rans DC United? Maybe their complete capitulation against Inter Miami, 6-2, to cough up their all-time points record on decision day?

Certainly, all of those examples could easily be the low point for a team over the course of a bad season.

But I’ve opted for a slightly less heralded choice, their 4-0 road loss against Charlotte FC.

Coughing up four goals is always a bad day, but this game comes with a few extras that push it further up my list.

For starters, we should take into account the timing of this match. New England entered the final four weeks of the season with a slim but possible chance of making the playoffs. The Revolution desperately needed to rally together and play as a team, to fight for each other, and to get everyone moving in the same direction.

That… didn’t happen.

The above highlight package alludes to but doesn’t show the shoving match that took place between Carles Gil and Xavier Arreaga at halftime. Also included in that match was two separate players receiving three separate yellows (two of them back-to-back for a red card to Dylan Borrero) for shouting at the officiating staff.

This game was when it became obvious, at least to me, that it was truly over. Frustration and discord had finally built up to the point where it was leaking through the seams and into public view. They earned just three points through the final five matches of the season, scoring five times and conceding 14 goals in the process.

Honorable Mentions:

*Gestures Broadly*

9-2 aggregate against Club America in CCC

6-2 at Inter Miami (also 4-1 vs Inter Miami)

4-0 at Columbus Crew (also 5-1 vs Columbus Crew)

4-0 at DC United

5-1 at Philadelphia Union

What Now?

I think taken in its entirety we can see a few trends forming in New England that need to be addressed.

For starters, the roster (as constructed in 2024) was better suited to playing in transition than to playing with possession. The roster will either need to undergo significant changes, or the tactics will need to shift more towards “deep organized defending/attacking on the counter”.

My guess is that the front office will deem the former option a more viable plan. New England has a lot of flexibility to change the roster this offseason. Recently, Greg Johnstone, Tom Pinzone and I discussed who should be let go and who should get another year on Revolution Recap.

Revolution Recap: Off-Season Look Ahead

This season was bad. There are no easy fixes. However, barring a change in coaching (fingers crossed), the biggest roster impact in my mind would be replacing Giacomo Vrioni at striker.

You cannot afford to swing and miss on your designated players in MLS - much less at striker - and with only 16 goals across 67 appearances, it’s hard to argue he hasn’t been a miss.

Beyond that, New England needs better defensive support in the midfield so that center backs don’t need to step up to put out fires. Alhassan Yusuf looks like a step in the right direction, but more will be needed.

I expect a busy offseason, but for now let’s just all enjoy watching some MLS playoff soccer, and we can come back rejuvenated and ready to be disappointed again in 2025.