Last month of the Revolution’s 2018 season, which means no playoffs for them. Again.
October 6, 2018, at Atlanta United, 2-1 L
This was the game with the absolutely unbearable announcers. I knew it was a nationally televised match, but for the first twenty minutes or so, I thought they were broadcasting Atlanta United’s feed because the announcers would not shut up about Atlanta United. It was worse than the time the Kansas City announcers wouldn’t stop going on about the turf at Gillette Stadium. Worse than the NYCFC broadcast that kept cutting away from the ball every time the Revolution had possession to show NYCFC players on the bench. After the first goal (complete with GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLL call, which, to be fair, the announcer also did for the Revolution’s late goal), I switched to watching the muted video stream and listening to the Revolution’s radio call with a 2-3 minute lag. As for the game itself, the Revolution played with the intent of not losing by a lot of goals, which is not how you win games. Juan Agudelo picked up the late consolation goal in the second minute of stoppage time.
October 13, 2018, vs. Orlando City SC, 2-0 W
Was away for this game and missed it, but the Revolution picked up another home win. Cristian Penilla and Diego Fagundez scored their twelfth and eighth goals of the season respectively. Orlando is another team that struggled in 2018, but these are the kind of games the Revolution historically, bizarrely, can’t win. See the tie against a 2-win San Jose team earlier in the season.
October 18, 2018, at Real Salt Lake, 4-1 L
This was basically the Toronto game again. They went down early, stayed down, and when they had a chance to start a comeback, Nick Rimando saved a Teal Bunbury penalty kick. Which isn’t that surprising1, but that’s the kind of game it was. Kelyn Rowe got his first goal of the season to close out the scoring for the night.
1According to the MLS website2, Rimando has faced 32 unsuccessful penalty kick attempts out a total of 88 taken against him, which is more than 36%, double or close to double the typical miss rate for penalty kicks. Besides that ridiculous percentage, the number of unsuccessful penalties against him is more than the total number of penalties all but the top dozen or so MLS goalkeepers have faced.
2mlssoccer.com, which belongs in the ranks of PIN numbers and ATM machines. This is what happens when you don’t found your league until 1996 and the Multiple Listing Service exists.
October 28, 2018, vs. Montreal Impact, 1-0 W
For the second year in a row, New England ended their season by playing Montreal. Last year they were spared the indignity of not winning a single road game with a late goal from Rowe to earn a 3-2 victory. This year, the big story was Fagundez scoring to secure the win as well as pick up his 50th MLS regular season goal. He’s the youngest player to do so (the second youngest is Landon Donovan) and the third Revolution player after Taylor Twellman and Lee Nguyen.
Record for October: 2W-2L-0D
Overall record: 10W-13L-11D
At the end of the season, it came down to not winning enough games. For all Brad Friedel’s talk, he ended 2018 with less points than New England finished with in 2017 (41 vs. 45). His 10W-13L-11D record is about the same as the 13W-15L-6D from Jay Heaps’ last season with the team, and although early on it looked like they might have better balance between their home and away records, they weren’t as good at home in 2018 and they still only won 2 games on the road. I don’t think it’s entirely Friedel’s fault, and I don’t think a revolving door of coaches is the solution to all the Revolution’s woes, though there are some concerning comments from the players about the first-year coach. I’m interested to see how next season goes, but I’m not sure I’m even cautiously optimistic about it. More like keeping optimism in a box in the back of the closet where it can be dragged out if things start going well and are still going well in mid-October or so. Here’s to the end of the 2018 New England Revolution season and the start of the 2019 season, another year of dreaming of 20-goal DPs, stadium deals, and MLS cup.
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