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3 takeaways as the Revolution’s 2025 season came to an end with a 2-2 draw against Chicago
New England's season ended fittingly, surrendering a late equalizer to squander a chance at a dramatic win.
The Revolution tied the Chicago Fire 2-2 at Gillette Stadium on Saturday night. It was the team’s 2025 season finale, as New England finished the year 9-16-9 and out of the playoff picture.
Appropriately, the last game of the season seesawed late in the second half, with the Revolution proving ultimately unable to hold a dramatically attained (and briefly held) lead against Chicago.
The opening goal came less than a minute into the match, with New England midfielder Alhassan Yusuf pouncing on a Fire turnover near its own goal. Chicago found a late equalizer via Philip Zinckernagel’s close range finish. In stoppage time, Revolution players managed to send home fans on one last circular journey.
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After it appeared that Revolution striker Dor Turgeman had grabbed a 96th minute winner on a header via Carles Gil’s free kick, a Chicago shot deflected off Turgeman and into his own net for a 99th minute own goal (and a 2-2 outcome).
Now, the Revolution enter another offseason which will compel changes. The club, as it has done several other times in recent years, will try to rebuild.
Here are a few takeaways:
The 2025 season ended in fitting circumstances.
Most of Saturday’s clash against Chicago was a fairly subdued affair. Though the Fire had playoff implications on the line (in terms of seeding), New England had nothing to play for other than pride.
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In that regard, Revolution players held up their end of the bargain. Yusuf’s opportunistic pounce in the first minute gave the home fans something to cheer, though neither team was able to secure control over the proceedings for most of the next 80 minutes.
In the final 20 minutes (a period that included a voluminous amount of stoppage time), both teams scrambled to find a winning goal. It seemed New England had found one via the head of Turgeman, but the Israeli forward — who now has an impressive early tally of three goals in three games with the Revolution — was unluckily on the wrong end of an own goal minutes later.
The details of the sequence are honestly less important than the outcome itself: No team in MLS seemed more capable of surrendering a goal immediately after scoring one in 2025 than the Revolution. It felt fitting, if drearily disappointing, that the season ended with such a sequence.
Another complete roster overhaul seems unlikely.
Looking beyond the game itself, the offseason beckons. Unlike a year ago, when sporting director Curt Onalfo made 16 changes to the roster and packed years of changes into a single offseason, the 2025-26 period seems destined to be less involved.
Granted, there will be big changes, but much of that will revolve around who is appointed the next head coach (more on this below). Aside from coaching, New England needs to address several problem areas in its lineup.
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Additional depth — and possibly a starter or two — is needed in central defense, center midfield, and up top in the attack. This will also be updated to include outside back if talented youngster Peyton Miller heads to Europe (meaning the team loses its starting left back) or if Brandon Bye leaves as a free agent (meaning, at the very least, more depth would be needed at right back).
That said, it’s very likely that most of the bigger names occupying spots on the current New England roster will return in 2026 due to contractual realities and the nature of the salary cap. Whoever gets the next coaching role will have a simple if difficult task: Take most of the roster at hand — which has talent — and try to maneuver it to a better finish than 11th place in the Eastern Conference.
Picking Caleb Porter’s successor will show how much (if anything) club leadership has learned.
Onalfo continues to occupy the role of sporting director, though his own future with the club remains uncertain. As of the immediate postgame moment following the season finale, he remains employed and will therefore be looked to for the head coaching search.
Exactly what the profile of head coach candidates looks like will be interesting for fans to see, and also illustrative of just how much he may have learned from the last two-and-a-half years.
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Since Bruce Arena’s resignation, the club has been stuck in a seemingly perpetual state of reacting, rebuilding, and underachieving. Despite assembling what appears to be a fairly talented roster by MLS standards, the team fell far short of expectations due largely to a lack of being able to consistently create goal-scoring chances (and, of equal importance, being able to convert chances).
Porter was brought in as an experienced winner, but was never able to impose his vision with much effect. His successor will need to better grapple with the idiosyncrasies of New England; the turf field, the occasionally harsh weather, and the nature of the Revolution’s current peripheral reality in the local sports market.
Embracing the club’s smaller (but passionate) fanbase and — as Onalfo frequently points out — making Gillette Stadium a difficult place for visiting teams again will be job No. 1.
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