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‘I don’t agree with the opinion’: As playoff hopes dwindle, Revolution management responds to fan statements
Sporting director Curt Onalfo said he has a "vision for the club," but provided a strangely underwhelming reply when asked about it.
Winless in the team’s last nine games — a period stretching back to May 31 — the Revolution are a club in crisis. With 10 games to go, New England is currently 10 points below the Eastern Conference playoff line.
In a larger sense, the future of the club is increasingly up for grabs. Simultaneous to the ongoing negotiations around a potential soccer-specific stadium in Everett is the increasingly precarious future of the current soccer-specific leadership.
The jobs of both head coach Caleb Porter and sporting director Curt Onalfo were recently called into question by the team’s leading supporters’ groups: The Midnight Riders and the The Rebellion. Each group issued a statement following the most recent game — a calamitous 3-1 home loss against last place CF Montreal — in which the direction of the team was openly questioned.
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The Rebellion went a step further, calling for “the immediate release” of both Porter and Onalfo.
“It’s time to bring the fight back to the Revolution and give the dedicated supporters something to cheer for — and no longer be embarrassed about,” concluded the statement.
The team has made no changes since the statements were issued, even when handed a two-week break due to the start of the annual Leagues Cup (which New England, having finished among the bottom teams in MLS in 2024, did not qualify for).
If anything, the club’s response in the ensuing period of time has been to hurl additional resources at what already appears to be a forlorn playoff push.
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Matt Turner, one of the beloved heroes of the Revolution’s 2021 Supporters’ Shield triumph, was brought back on a loan from Lyon in a hastily-prepared move after the French club was forced to grapple with its unresolved debt issues.
It was at Turner’s Monday press conference that Onalfo was asked publicly about the fans’ statements.
“Well, listen, I can’t blame the fans and the supporters’ groups for being upset and for being frustrated,” he said. “We are frustrated. There’s probably nobody that’s more frustrated than me as I sit at the helm. Our job in the front office is to continue to make the team better. We’re doing that today, and we’ll continue to do that.
“We have a vision for the club,” Onalfo continued. “I’ve been here for six years, and I helped build one of the best pro pathways in Major League Soccer. It took at least two years for that to start seeing some of the fruits of the labor. Now we have one of the better ones in the league, producing great players, and my goal is to do the same thing with the first team.”
Onalfo added that the club’s chief issue is simply winning home games, though he was short on specifics about how to address such a fundamental problem.
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In a basic sense, he’s not wrong about home games. The Revolution have indeed been atrocious at Gillette Stadium in 2025, currently holding just a 2-7-2 MLS record at home (contrasted with a 4-4-5 road record).
“My job and my focus is to help Caleb, support Caleb and the staff and the players, to make sure that we get a result this weekend against this D.C. United at home and we start changing that home form,” he concluded.
The game on Saturday against D.C. United is a must-win. As one of the few teams below the Revolution in the standings, a win against United would at least prolong the narrative that playoffs are possible. A loss would not mathematically eliminate New England, but would simply continue the existing trend of underachievement, and make the climb back to the playoff line even steeper.
Porter was asked about the supporters’ statements after training a day later on Tuesday.
“I didn’t know about the statement. I don’t have social media, so I didn’t hear about it until I think someone asked the question to Curt yesterday,” said the second-year Revolution head coach.
“For me, fans are entitled to their opinion and I respect their opinion. I don’t agree with the opinion, but like I said I didn’t even know about it,” Porter added. “So I’m not really thinking about that. I’m thinking about winning the next game. That’s it. It doesn’t really impact anything I do.”
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Despite mounting difficulties, Porter has maintained throughout that his team remains committed. Asked about the squad’s response in the last two weeks, he was adamant.
“Great. Unbelievable, and I think that’s the big thing,” he explained. “Put your energy on that, and making sure that the players during a game feel positive feeling. That would be the best thing that the fans could do.”
Yet while he acknowledged the introduction of Turner “brings a lot of intangibles” (he specifically cited “leadership, confidence, experience, and winning”), Porter sounded decidedly underwhelmed when asked about the 31-year-old goalkeeper’s first training session.
“[Turner] is a goalkeeper — sometimes he saves the ball, sometimes it goes in the goal,” he admitted (though he added this was “normal,” and that the Revolution’s newest goalkeeper is “a good player”).
Looking ahead, it’s likely that Porter (and possibly) Onalfo are managing their way through the final 10 games of the season with jobs on the line. A second straight season with no playoffs — particularly given the number of changes made to the team in the last 12 months — would be a major failure.
But when asked by Blazing Musket reporter Seth Macomber a follow-up question on Monday — “In an ideal world, what does the vision of this club look like to you?” — Onalfo offered a slightly strange reply.
“We need to be a team that’s winning games consistently, and occasionally losing games,” New England’s sporting director began. “That’s the vision. That’s where we need to get to, and these things don’t always happen overnight.”
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For a team that’s been mired near the bottom of the Eastern Conference for almost two seasons — and whose supporters’ groups are openly calling for changes — it seems like leadership could aim for a higher “ideal world” than to be “occasionally losing games.”
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