Bound for the Playoffs Land

Well, MLS made it to the end of the regular season. Kind of. All fourteen teams in the eastern conference played their planned twenty-three games, in contrast to the western conference where only four of twelve teams did. Most western conference teams did only miss one or two games, but Colorado played a league-low eighteen games. As people suspected, when it became impossible for Colorado to fit in all their coronavirus-cancelled games before the last day of the season without playing, like, every day, MLS announced that playoff seeding would be based on points per game. Nothing changed in the eastern conference, but some western conference fans were (probably rightfully) annoyed that a team that missed close to a quarter of the season ended up with a pretty high playoff seed.

Wednesday, October 28 at New York Red Bulls – 0-1 L – In this classic Revolution performance, they played reasonably well, and outplayed New York by certain metrics, but failed to put quality shots on goal and gave up an 89th minute goal off a corner kick. Again. With the season winding down, it feels like Bruce Arena is trying to manage minutes while figuring out who he wants to play during the playoffs but also getting the team to score consistently without giving up stupid goals. It’s something I don’t think he’s quite worked out yet. Through most of the season, they weren’t scoring, but they also weren’t letting opposing teams score, so there were a lot of 1-0/0-1 wins and losses and 0-0/1-1 ties. Then when the scoring picked up a bit, they also started letting in more goals – see Montreal on October 14th and the next game against D.C. But even with the loss, because of other results in the league, the Revolution clinched their playoff spot.

Sunday, November 1 vs. D.C. United – 4-3 W – To close out the home slate at Gillette, the Revolution and D.C. met on a very wet and rainy afternoon in Foxborough. The defense did not have a great game, as the scoreline suggests. They looked to be struggling with the slipperiness of the ball and didn’t want to commit too hard to plays, allowing D.C. two early goals. Adam Buksa got one back for New England after Carles Gil’s penalty attempt hit the post and rebounded into the penalty box. (Second time Gil’s been rescued by a teammate after an unconverted penalty kick, the first being in the insane 4-4 Kansas City draw last season that led into the losses that culminated in Brad Friedel’s dismissal.) After the halftime break, Tajon Buchanan, who was looking pretty good on the right wing, put in a cross that a United player kicked into his own goal very unnecessarily. We’ll take it. The Revolution went ahead on a Teal Bunbury goal thanks to another Buchanan cross, but D.C. leveled the score with a third goal of their own because apparently the game wasn’t enough of a mess yet. New England almost scored after Gustavo Bou, on a breakaway, got the ball to Buksa, but the United goalkeeper made the save. He, however, gave up a rebound, and who else but Bunbury was there to get his second goal of the night and earn the Revolution the win. For about fifteen minutes in the second half of this game, New England had all three of their DPs (designated players) on the field for the first time since July and MLS is back.

Sunday, November 8 at Philadelphia Union – 0-2 L – Same song, second fourth/fifth verse. For the fourth time in the regular season (fifth overall including MLS is back), the Revolution and the Union faced each other. For the third time (fourth overall), the Revolution lost. Arena’s still messing with the lineup. He started all three DPs, but people were not on the same page. There were way too many passes behind players, out of bounds passes, confusion about who was going to take the ball, and nobody would shoot. It’s a little hard to score if you never shoot. No offence combined with questionable defense led to the loss. The defense has not had a good end to the season. They’re not closing down players outside the box to stop crosses, not closing down players inside the box to stop shots, and not marking second balls after set pieces. Let’s hope they get it together for the playoffs.

Now it’s on to the playoffs, though the Revolution managed to play themselves into a play-in game against the Montreal Impact. Hopefully they’ll at least win that, but this is the Revolution, so even if they do, they’ll probably lose the next actual playoff game, get sent home for postseason, and come back next year for another season of futility. But for now, we have at least one more night of Revolution-induced high blood pressure.