Level Set 8, the New England Revolution: MLS's Bridesmaids. Who Don't Quit.

Holy shit. That is a fucking cast.

What follows is a brief history of the New England Revolution, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

Thumbnail History
I moved to Boson in 1998, the same season I consciously uncoupled from DC United (successful teams don’t challenge you enough as a fan) and embraced the New England Revolution. The Wooden Spoon stung their bums for the one and only time in their history at the end of that very season. Fortunately, for both me and them, New England became one of the first teams to crack the post-contraction code and that made them the Second Most Menacing Team in MLS for pretty much every season between 2002 and 2007. To be clear, not all of those MLS Cup runs were created equal: with Taylor Twellman and MLS iron-man/assist-king Steve Ralston in the starting XI, the 2002 roster had the beginnings of the Revs’ real glory seasons, but it took additions like Matt Reis in goal, Michael Parkhurst and Jay Heaps leading the back line, plus Shalrie Joseph dominating midfield to transform the Revolution into a team that could win any given game. Putting a team like that into the playoffs season after season (e.g., from 2002-2009) gave them plenty of chances to win it all. Which, again, they did not. To get a little personal, none of those losses kicked me like the 2006 final and, firmly as believe that spectator sports cannot deliver trauma worth even five minutes of therapy, I do consider that loss formative to how I “enjoy” soccer to this day (i.e., never get too close). The Revs’ history tells a familiar tale from there – you know the drill, players leaving the team one by one, new players coming in who don’t check the entire box, a once-reliable coach sticking around past his sell-by date, etc. – and several rough years followed…and then came the 2014 season. New England had made the playoffs the season before, sure, but they fielded not just a young team, but one that had mainly proved itself in MLS. It started with Andrew Farrell in defense, but continued up the spine with Scott Caldwell in central midfield and Kelyn Rowe and Lee Nguyen running the midfield. That basic line-up got a boost of nitrous in the person and personality of U.S. Men’s National Team adoptee, Jermaine Jones, who came in as a late-season addition and girded every loin he could bark into shape. And all of those budding youngsters promised a brighter future…until they very abruptly didn’t. The Revolution sulked back into the wilderness for fives seasons after 2014 – I mean, they didn’t do shit – but caught up to the new way of doing things by the 2021 season. Part of that relied on calling in new designated players – the (cliché alert) mercurial Gustavo Bou and one of MLS’s latter-day greats, Carles Gil – but the other half relied on spotting some of the best North American talent of the current generation – e.g., Matt Turner (goalkeeper) and Tajon Buchanan (full/wingback) lead that bunch, but Henry Kessler and DeJuan Jones are nothing to sniff at. That team benefitted from the wisdom of MLS Svengali, Bruce Arena, and leaned on a spine of some old-guard regulars – i.e., Farrell and long-time MLS-above-averager, Matt Polster, but it took a second generation of budding talent to lift the 2021 Revolution team to the then-regular season record for points earned in MLS history. That record was broken just three years later by Inter Miami CF. In 2024 (see same link). Oh, and they beat the Revs head-to-head when they did it. Straight up pillaging.

Getting Reacquainted with the New England Revolution, MLS's Mighty Bridesmaids

New England, in off-season.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

I moved to Boson in 1998, the same season I consciously uncoupled from DC United (successful teams don’t challenge you enough) and embraced the New England Revolution as my team. The Wooden Spoon stung their bums for the one and only time at the end of that very season and, to be clear, I was not surprised. I watched them try to squeeze star-power out of Darren Sawatzky, fer crissakes. How could I have known that the New England Revolution would go on to contest four MLS Cups in six years a mere three seasons later? Sure, they missed the playoffs two more times (the 90s were not gentle) before they established themselves as MLS’s Second Most Menacing Team and, obviously, all four of those trips to MLS ended in a disappointment and with soccer’s equivalent of a side of syphilis, but I bumbled into backing the right horse, regardless. Against the back drop of everything that came before, the 2002 MLS Cup run almost certainly felt like a fluke (bit fuzzy here; courting the wife, becoming a stepfather that season), but, for every fucking MLS Cup between 2005 and 2007, the Revolution walked onto the field with a very real shot at, and expectation of, winning. Never happened, of course, as New England lost every one and they remain the Buffalo Bills of MLS to this day, the bridesmaid to everyone else’s bride, etc. For me, none of those losses hurt like the 2006 final and, for all that I firmly believe that exploring the trauma sports fans experience when their team loses is the greatest possible waste of time for any and all therapists’ time, I do consider that loss formative to how I “enjoy” soccer to this day (i.e., never get too close). To their very real credit, the Revolution has never stopped trying since that stab straight through the fucking heart. They returned to MLS Cup the very next season…and lost again, to the same fucking team (the Houston Dynamo), only in regulation that time. They returned to MLS Cup again in 2014…which they lost to a different team (peak Los Angeles Galaxy that time), but at least they made it to extra-time in that one. And yet they picked themselves up again- if after missing the playoffs for three consecutive seasons (again), and after a couple seasons of “making the playoffs” (i.e., if you die after your first step in the door…?) – right after that, they produced the greatest regular season in MLS history. That happened in 2021. The record still stands, but I’d argue for a deeper truth about that record: the Revolution earned it with their third very capable team in franchise history. I have no doubt that all of the times they’ve fallen short stings every die-hard Revolution fan like a swarm of hornets, but, as well as the “bridesmaids” thing holds up, New England are kinda sorta the masters of the rebuild. They have been successful. They're the 10th most-successful team in MLS history on the Joy Points Scale (see end of post for methodology*).

Best Season(s)

Of course, I have to say the record-setting Supporters’ Shield winning season, but I have massive fucking respect for the Revolution team that shook off the shock of the 2006 MLS Cup loss and made it back to MLS Cup 2007. They’d lost Clint Dempsey’s combination of goals and a beating competitive heart by then, but that team rallied, put their collective heads down, and got shit done…well, until the second half of MLS Cup 2007. To think they went into halftime up 1-0 and on a goal by Taylor Twellman to boot. Those were the...ddddaaaaaaaaaaaayyyysss!

An MLS History Project, 2007: A Grand Re-Re-Re-Opening

All was right in New England the next season...

“The 2007 season was often cited as the first season in the modern-era of Major League Soccer.”

This claim is currently under investigation…but the phrasing begs a question: did another season replace this one as the season “often cited as the first season of the modern-era of Major League Soccer”? Also, is that hyphen necessary?

Grammatical/verb tense cheap shots aside (to think, what someone else could do with any of my posts), Major League Soccer saw a handful of changes going into the 2007 season that stake the claim. For one, MLS allowed jersey sponsors for the first time that season (one of the sponsors hints at what might have nudged them over the line: “The international recognized brand, Red Bull became the shirt sponsor of New York Red Bulls, whom they owned.”). The long, uneven path toward standing up an international club competition in the CONCACAF region got a boost as well; while they wouldn’t switch to the CONCACAF Champions League until the 2008 season, MLS and Liga MX ran the Superliga up the flagpole – and, holy shit, the New England Revolution won the 2008 edition, beating the Houston Dynamo on penalty kicks. Turns out pigs can fly, man…

…but if I had to name the one thing that finally made these regional tilts worth playing, I’d go with the magnificent duels Houston played against La Liga’s Pachuca CF. They played the first during the 2007 season, back when it remained the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Houston, those beautiful bastards made it possible to believe a North American team might one day one it all.

Two new soccer-specific stadiums opened – one of them hosting a new expansion team (welcome aboard, Toronto FC!); the other was the Colorado Rapids’ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, aka, The Dick (tell me they still call it that) – and MLS made some tweaks to the rules of competition (again; more below), but it was the arrival of the designated-player (DP) rule that really puts a spine into that “first season in the modern-era of MLS” claim. I think just about everyone likely to find this lonely post knows how the DP rule works (short version: “permitting one big-ticket foreign player to play for each team without going against the team's salary cap”), but it’s fun to look at who showed up in that inaugural class:

An MLS History Project, 2006: My First Heartbreak (& New England's Third)

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

The “firsts” start to dry up as Major League Soccer’s history moves closer to the present – does adding a new team really count in a league that adds two a season? - but 2006 saw a few. The Chicago Fire opened the league’s third soccer-specific stadium up in Bridgeview, Illinois (per franchise tradition, it was a mixed bag) and the ridiculously-named New York/New Jersey MetroStars became the no less ridiculously-named New York Red Bulls (or Red Bull New York, I can never truly remember). Parenthetical specifics aside, both moves amounted to what the domestic top-flight needed more than anything else: long-term investment and stability.

The biggest on-field change saw the San Jose Earthquakes move to Houston, Texas for the 2006 season. It didn’t look great, but it looked nothing like the contraction that culled the Florida teams after the 2001 regular season (my notes here). In fact, a general failure to invest in the San Jose market prompted the move, not league-wide financial struggles. I’ll get to all that and more, but, to paraphrase a line from the Jaws 3 trailer, the 2006 season was unusually personal.

Soccer fans talk about “bleeding” for their teams all the time, and of “living and dying on every goal.” I don’t do that. In fact, I can count on the number of games that transported me to real rapture on two hands at most. To name two that should give you some idea of where I set the bar, the United States Men’s 3-2 win over Portugal in their 2002 World Cup opener and the Portland Timbers’ famous double-post victory over Sporting Kansas City make the cut. (Another is highly personal, a random league game that saw Liverpool put four goals past Newcastle in a back-and-forth barn-burner they ultimately won; I took a shot of gin for every goal Liverpool scored that season, and it took some work to talk the bartender into honoring the tradition). I’ve got moments where joy and rage boiled over by the hundreds, but it takes a lot to get me to transcendence.

MLS Cup 2006 was another one.

An MLS History Project, 2002: Coming Back from the Dead to Become the Buffalo Bills

Not judging, just stating (but, yes, judging).

It’s easier to know something about every team in a league with fewer teams, obviously, but few things do the experience real justice quite like the numbers:

“Each team played a total of 28 matches in the regular season, which ran from March to September, facing teams within their conference four times and outside of their conference two times.”

After seeing the same names that often, how could you not put a face to every name? (Also, it was mostly names and faces; I don’t honestly recall how many games I could watch on a weekly basis back then, but I think you’d be surprised; more later.) That was true at the time, but, today, I couldn’t pick Rodrigo Faria out of a police line-up if he was wearing a shirt that said “Rodrigo Faria” on it. And that guy lead the New York/New Jersey MetroStars in scoring in 2002. The limits of going by memory…

If you go by the goals scored, 2002 wasn’t much to look at. For one, it was the lowest-scoring season in MLS history to date with just 42.1 goals for/against league wide (helpfully, the 2001 average came in at 43.25, the former league-low; less helpfully, 2000’s average was 51.0). I remember commentators, and probably the league, panicking about that a little, but can you blame them? MLS contracted from 12 teams down to 10 between 2001 and 2002 – and, apparently, drew up the papers to fold. If you love soccer already, you’ve already priced in low-scoring games, but, just for a minute, put yourself in the shoes of someone whose chosen career is pitching soccer to a country famously hostile to soccer. Now, as that person, how would you feel if the league you ran spent two seasons basically proving the point of everyone who hates that sport – e.g., that no one ever (fucking) scores. So, yes, I’m sympathetic to the situation.

How bad was it? MLS Cup runner-up, the New England Revolution, scored the most goals that season, 49 in all. They barely raised a low average, in other words. The Revs had a pretty damn strong team that season, obviously; a team doesn’t (barely) win the Eastern Conference and reach MLS Cup without outdoing its peers. That didn’t make it any less fitting that MLS Cup 2002* was decided by a single goal, scored in extra time – this would be the last “golden goal” in MLS history – and by a team that had relied on its defense more than I remembered (* That link takes you to the highlights, and they're fun, for the Jones/Franchino battle alone; also, seeing the winner again...and it's been years...it hurt). To pick up another thread to the ultimate, achingly-awaited triumph: when the Los Angeles Galaxy broke its MLS Cup duck, they borrowed the playbook from the 2000 Kansas City Wizards (and, for the record, Blazing Saddles has forever ruined me for any phrase that begins with “Kansas City”; WARNING, not PC, but very effective in its message), and brought in a ringer: Carlos Ruiz, a Guatemalan forward/diver/con-artist/street-genius. It was no surprise at all to see him score the winner; Ruiz had already scored over half the Galaxy’s goals during the regular season (seriously, 24 goals of 44 goals). To hang an analogy on it, the Galaxy was only able to win an MLS Cup by going from Scandal to Patty Smyth and Scandal.

An MLS History Project, 2000: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Least Watchable of Times

Bro. Don't. It doesn't end well.

First, and full disclosure, you can skip this post and just watch a young Rob Stone tell you the story of the 2000 MLS season. That’s about an hour of your life (and why'd they stop making those?!), so this’ll be shorter. Probably. I do go on…starting now…

If I gave the impression that I can place some, or even all MLS Cups in time, this is inaccurate. The 2000 MLS Cup Final, on the other hand, sticks in my memory like a rock in a shoe. It was the first final in league history that I dreaded and prayed to all the gods I can name (it’s a lot) to keep it from coming to pass. It did, obviously, and the 2000 Kansas City Wizards team that won it was that rock in my shoe. It took their more recent face-lift and a general improvement in their approach to the game to make me stop hating them. So, that was what? 15 years?

The Wizards won MLS Cup that season by beating a far more interesting Chicago Fire 1-0 on an 11th minute goal by Danish import, Miklos Molnar. To look back through brighter lenses, that awful ending casts a shadow over a season that sparkled with all kinds of massive debuts. The 2000 season saw the great incoming and upcoming of some of the most important players in MLS history, but it was the latter group (e.g., the upcomers) that teams would rely on and build around for the entire decade to come. As you’ll see when I get to them, these aren’t all household names; better still, at least one actual legend made a lot of noise when he joined the league, only to leave it with a bitchy little Teutonic whimper. I’ll get to all that, but, first, I’ve got to talk about MLS’s updated mechanics.

A lot of league’s most infamous gimmicks – no ties, the 35-yard shootout that prevented them, the ridiculous scoring system that followed from, keeping time on a scoreboard clock that counted down to 0:00 with no input from the referee, and so on; just all the comical misjudging of what American soccer fans wanted, not to mention the idea that that stupid shit would lure fans of America’s Big 4-5 to soccer (deep breath) – those all died with First Kick 2000. Don’t take that to mean the fever had totally broken: