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3 takeaways from the Revolution’s home-opening loss against the Crew
In a game decided by the thinnest of margins, New England came up a little bit short.
The Revolution lost to the Columbus Crew 1-0 in the 2025 home-opener on Saturday night. New England is now winless through its first two games of the new season.
In truth, it was hardly a bad performance against one of the Eastern Conference’s better teams over the past several years. Columbus was unable to create more than a few momentary openings. Unfortunately for New England, Caleb Porter’s team was able to create even less.
Crew center forward Jacen Russell-Rowe’s 51st minute well-placed finish was the difference.
Here are a few takeaways:
Lack of cohesion continues
A theme in the season-opening draw in Nashville continued on Saturday, with the Revolution struggling to combine passes in the attacking third. The outcome was a predictable lack of goal-scoring opportunities, particularly from open play (more below on set pieces).
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The largely remade roster has gelled in certain respects — looking fairly composed defensively for much of the night, especially in the opening 10 minutes when New England calmly defended a nearly continuous spell of Columbus possession — but looked out of ideas when trying to move the ball into dangerous positions.
The Revolution generated just 0.23 xG, according to Fotmob stats. That isn’t going to be enough to win very many games.
It may already seem hard for fans to be asked to create space for the team to develop chemistry as multiple weeks go by without a win, but clearly that’s still a necessity. New England’s capacity when in possession of the ball remains a work in progress.
Columbus simply blocked the middle of the field
Heat maps don’t often paint a complete picture of a soccer game, and need to be interpreted with a grain of salt, but the one from Saturday’s clash with Columbus demonstrates a takeaway that was painfully obvious. The Revolution’s central attack was utterly nonexistent against the Crew.
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The enormous hole in the middle of Saturday’s heat map is a good indicator that the Revolution, despite having playmaker-in-chief Carles Gil in the lineup and a forceful striker in Leo Campana, simply could not work the ball into central positions while in the opposing team’s half of the field.
The Crew, playing a 3-5-2 that often left as many as seven players in the middle of the park, were admittedly deployed to achieve this specific tactical victory. There simply was no space, leaving New England to try and go around. Yet the inability to do this even once or twice is slightly worrying.
Unless the Revolution can start finding goals more consistently from out wide (though the crossing was poor), it will inevitably lead to future opponents simply repeating versions of the same defensive game plan.
New England Revolution 0 : 1 Columbus Crew ▫ Passes into final 1/3: 15 – 45 ▫ Passes in final 1/3: 48 – 113 ▫ Passes into opp. box: 7 – 12 #NERvCLB
— MLS Analytics (@mlsstat.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 10:33 PM
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Set pieces looking better, but no finishing product
A clear weakness in 2024 (one of many) was the lack of production on attacking set pieces, along with the corresponding inability to defend them as well.
To address this, the Revolution hired Marc Ortí Esteban from English Premier League side Brentford. So far, results have been slightly muted given the lack of any goals.
Still, arguably the best chances New England created on Saturday were from set pieces. Campana was able to get his head on a 13th minute corner kick, nodding it down toward goal. Crew center back Yevhen Cheberko prevented it from being the opening goal only by clearing it off the line.
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In the 23rd minute, Campana was again the beneficiary of a set piece, this time a cleverly designed near-post run pass from a free kick outside the box. Again, however, New England’s striker was unable to find the back of the net, as his chipped finish was partly blocked by Columbus goalkeeper Patrick Schulte before being cleared.
Each attempt showcased a level of promise from a part of the game in which New England looked totally ineffectual a season ago. If Esteban can keep it up, the Revolution will eventually start seeing results.
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