It’s in the title, folks. Every week during the MLS season, Backheeled will dive into the biggest Winners and Losers from around the league. This week, we’re taking stock of a failing project in New England, admiring the latest edition of El Tráfico, pouring one out for MLS defenders, and more.
Loser: Caleb Porter
“We had good players here...they just didn't happen to be the right players, once we got in here,” Caleb Porter said back in January as the dust settled on New England’s flurry of offseason roster moves. “They're still good players, but now we have the right players. Now this is my team. These are my players. I've picked them, and I'm confident in the blueprint that I have.”
While Porter’s title is simply “head coach” for the Revolution, that quote above removed any doubt about whether he was involved in the league's largest roster rebuild this winter, working alongside sporting director Curt Onalfo. At Porter’s behest, the Revs brought back just 37.2% of their minutes from last season, which went down as the lowest figure among the 28 other eligible teams this year and the lowest MLS has seen since at least 2019. Across last year’s summer window and the most recent offseason, no one overhauled like New England — and, as a result, so few have struck out swinging like New England.
