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Revolution chart a new course with the intriguing head coach selection of Marko Mitrović
"I will use one word: Attack,” said Mitrović. “We will attack with the ball, and we will attack the ball when we don't have the ball, and we will be very aggressive with that.”
The Revolution took a step in a new direction with the introduction of head coach Marko Mitrović on Wednesday, breaking up the approach taken in each of its last two hirings. Where ex-New England head coaches Bruce Arena and Caleb Porter were MLS establishment, Mitrović will be entering his first job as the head coach of a club team.
Now 47, the Belgrade-born Mitrović brings extensive coaching experience, but almost exclusively at the youth level. The Serbian-American’s most recent job was leading the US youth team at the U-20 World Cup (culminating with a quarterfinal appearance after wins over France and Italy). Prior to that, he led the US team composed of mostly young players at last year’s Olympic Games, and was an assistant with the Serbian youth team that won the U-20 World Cup in 2015.
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Despite his lack of experience as a head coach at the club level, Mitrović’s abilities drew praise from New England sporting director Curt Onalfo.
“It’s no risk at all in my mind,” Onalfo said of hiring Mitrović despite this being his first MLS head coaching gig. “He’s exceptional in every way. Incredible person, you start there. Incredible integrity.
“He’s a modern coach, exceptional tactically, and really has a clear identity of how he wants to play, and how that will look on the field,” Onalfo added. “He’s able to express those in very simple ways. It’s easier to confuse players than make them understand, so he’s an incredible communicator. He’s got what the old school coaches have to win championships, yet you need to be a modern coach to deal with the players of today, and he knows how to connect with people, he knows how to treat people, and he knows how to get the most out of players. So for me, there’s no doubt.”
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Asked about his managerial style and tactical approach, Mitrović outlined clear objectives.
“We have to have fighting spirit,” he said. “We have to understand that we go out there to give everything we have, and that’s, for me, non-negotiable. Before we talk about any quality of our player or individual quality, we have to be sure that every player gave, that day, everything. We will live with the outcome of our performance.
“Now, tactically, let’s simplify this. I will use one word: Attack,” added Mitrović. “We will attack with the ball, and we will attack the ball when we don’t have the ball, and we will be very aggressive with that.”
Based only on his answer, it certainly sounds like there will be a departure from the style New England ended up playing under Porter. The Revolution tried (with varying levels of success) to be a defensively-oriented team in 2025, but wound up on the wrong end of too many low-scoring losses. From June until the end of the 2025 season, the Revolution were anonymously ensconced in 11th place in the Eastern Conference.
Going back to even earlier times — the Arena era — New England played an attack-oriented approach that often sacrificed everything else on the defensive end.
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So from an incautious approach under Arena to an overly cautious one under Porter, Mitrović will be hoping to strike the right balance.
Onalfo disputed the notion that Mitrović was picked partly to break with the club’s recent tradition of hiring past MLS Cup winners, adding that he was simply the best candidate (who just happened to not have head coaching experience in the league).
Still, there is something to the notion of a clean slate. Beyond the tactical inflexibilities, Arena and Porter were accompanied by distinctive levels of baggage. This, in Arena’s case, manifested in arrogance and (according to the conclusions of an MLS investigation) poor treatment of colleagues, which led to his abrupt 2023 exit. With Porter, it eventually poured out in contentious moments with the media as losses piled up.
As a head coach in MLS — a league practically engineered to create chaos — Mitrović will undoubtedly face adversity. Yet despite his lack of league credentials (beyond a tenure as a Chicago assistant from 2016-2019), he may ultimately be in possession of a better capacity to deal with it than his predecessors.
Explaining his background (and citing his childhood love of mathematics), Mitrović said his father once dreamed of seeing him attend M.I.T.
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“That was a topic in my house all the time,” he explained. “When I would come to Boston, I was always coming here in Foxborough. I never came to the city. I do remember we had two games here, one in New York and one here, and we stayed somewhere in the city. I don’t remember where. Then I took an Uber, went to M.I.T. and called my dad, and just like that, ‘I’m here’. Not the way that he wanted me to go to M.I.T, but now I’m here, I’m in Boston, so there is something in the universe there.”
Though MLS has never been labeled an orderly league, hiring someone who combines both a background in one of Europe’s storied academies (Red Star Belgrade), and an analytical approach might be exactly what the Revolution need.
Adding that he feels “very positive with the roster that we have right now,” Mitrović — a coach who promises to possess a combination of old-school grit with academic curiosity — could hit the ground running in New England.
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