New England Revolution: Resilience on display in win over NYCFC

The New England Revolution looked like they were down and out on Saturday against NYCFC, but they battled back and were able to get the three points.

The 3-2 win at Red Bull Stadium showed just how far this Revolution team has come. They are at the top of the Eastern Conference standings after nine games and have won four straight games.

In the past giving up the lead not once, but twice could have crumpled New England. They easily could have folded and just been contempt with walking away with a point.

But the club rallied together on Saturday night. Matt Turner literally saved the game for New England, while Gustavo Bou, Jon Bell, and Tommy McNamara were able to register goals for the Revs.

For Head Coach and Sporting Director Bruce Arena, Saturday’s win in New Jersey says a lot about the team.

He said, I think the last game, we made a lot of mistakes against a good team. You’re going to make mistakes against good teams – we’re aware of that. Yet, we didn’t put our heads down. We got a great lift psychologically and on the scoreboard from Matt Turner saving that penalty kick early in the game. Ended up giving up the lead twice, but the guys hung in there and we obviously scored an important third goal to gain all three points. Our team has a lot of character, they’re very competitive, and we think if we keep improving we’ll be a pretty good team towards the end of the year.”

The Revolution are coming off a particularly successful 2020 season. While they struggled in the regular season, they were still able to make it to the Eastern Conference Finals.

It appears that just having success in the playoffs isn’t good enough for Matt Polster and his teammates. They want to go all the way.

Polster said, “For this game, NYCFC’s probably one of the best teams in the league, in my opinion. They have a really good identity about them. To come back, they equalize 2-2 and for us to still push for three points on the road is impressive and I’m really proud of the group that they showed that kind of resilience. We wanted those three points. It just shows that we’re here to win something this year and improve from last year. Just getting to the Conference Finals isn’t good enough for this group. We want to get the finals and win the MLS Cup.”

The Revolution have another chance to prove just how far that they have come. With a win over the New York Red Bulls on Wednesday night, New England could have their first 5-0-0 start at home in club history.

With the resilience that the club has shown it will be hard to count them out of any game. Even in a prior game New England went down to NYRB and ended up securing the win.

So something might be different about the 2021 New England Revolution and if their winning streak continues after Wednesday night it will be hard to refute that.