Zolak & Bertrand: Porter, Revs Focused on Progress, not Pressure
With last weekend’s 2-1 loss at New York City FC, the rumbles have been growing louder from Revolution fans as they grow restless over the team’s four-game winless run to open the 2025 season. During his weekly check-in with Beetle, Zo and McKone, New England’s second-year manager Caleb Porter told the crew that the team is keeping its focus on improving, not the external noise.
Bertrand: “You’re taking heat out there in the streets, man. Are you feeling that?”
Porter: “Thanks for reminding me (laughter). My wife is reminding me, my kids are reminding me, and now you’re reminding me… It doesn’t change a thing. I can’t let the external noise affect me. I have to just focus on winning the next game; that’s the key. We’re four games in and we have to be a bit better, for sure, myself included.”
Porter has enough experience in the league to know that it only takes one breakthrough to shift the tides. But that doesn’t mean he is turning a blind eye to his team’s early shortcomings. The 11th-year MLS manager knows sometimes the only way past adversity is to keep your head down, keep the faith, and work through it.
“We know the bottom line. We understand where we’re at,” Porter said. “Obviously, the results aren’t there after four games. We’re in a tough position, but we can’t be victims. We’ve got to keep fighting and we’ve got to do something about it, that’s the key. How we do something about it is pretty simple: win the next game against [the] Red Bulls.”
On paper, the Revolution might appear to be well off the pace of their Eastern Conference peers through four weeks. However, Porter sees the gap shrinking every week, and lauds his team for being in a position to snatch a win late in each match.
“We’ve been in the second half of every game, there to win the game. That’s the good news. The bad news is we have not found the breakthrough, so we do need to be stronger mentally and guys need to step up. Everybody needs to step up a little bit and grind out a win.”
This week, Porter has the benefit of a rare bye weekend to grind away on the training field, before their next MLS match on Saturday, March 29 against their I-95 rivals, the New York Red Bulls (2:30 p.m.).
“Sometimes you don’t like that [the bye week], because you’re in a rhythm and you’re feeling good, you want to keep playing. In this case, it’s perfect timing for us to have two weeks to really reflect, look at some things, and work on a lot of things in training so that we can improve.
“The guys’ attitude is excellent. If you came out and watched our training, you’d never know based on their energy, their attitude, their buy-in, and their work rate – you’d never know that we haven’t won a game in the first four. So, that’s a good sign. Guys aren’t moping around, they’re not pouting, they’re not pointing fingers. They’ve got the right approach.”
Listen to the full segment!
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