FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – A lot of emotion boiled over for the New England Revolution on Saturday afternoon in the Tarheel State. The team came into their faceoff with Charlotte FC on a run of two points from a possible 12, a stretch marked by a series of mental lapses – at times individual and at times collective – from the Revs. And when the going got tough once again at Bank of America Stadium, the Revolution, for better or worse, got themselves going.
Everyone saw what happened: defender Xavier Arreaga and club captain Carles Gil got into a heated exchange at the end of the first half, and winger Dylan Borrero earned back-to-back yellow cards midway through the second, as New England ultimately conceded four unanswered goals to a Charlotte side that had struggled in recent weeks. Debates can be had over whether the Revolution deserved a penalty early in the game, and Arreaga was perhaps frustrated with his involvement in the goalmouth scramble that led to Charlotte’s first goal. But, ultimately, at a critical moment in the season, New England encountered adversity and let themselves get shaken.
None of this was lost on head coach Caleb Porter, of course; his first words to the media after the full-time whistle were to acknowledge that, “In some ways, it’s a broken record.” But coming off a few days where he and the squad could reflect, the coach felt that the team’s issue was not with their level of emotion, but rather with how they managed it – or, perhaps, how they were letting it manage them.
“Emotion is good; emotional is bad,” Porter said Tuesday after training. “So, there’s a fine line. You want your team to be passionate, you want them to be competitive, you want them to fight, you want them to hold each other accountable. You want them to hate losing. You want them to, at times, be frustrated at the fact that we haven’t won. But when that crosses the line to the point where now it becomes a negative, where we make dumb decisions by getting reds, or where we do things that affect our teammates in a bad way, or if we lose our heads – right? Because when your emotion is too high, your IQ goes down and you can’t think clearly. You don’t play well in that type of mindset. So, there is a very fine line between passion in a good way and being too emotional in a bad way.”
It is precisely that good kind of passion that Porter wants to see his team bring with them to the final weeks of this season, and he said he believed they had it in them to do just that. Porter went on to say that the exchange between Arreaga and Gil, while not by any means handled between the two in the best way, was indicative of both a bond between the players and a level of heart from both of them that could prove invaluable if expressed in the right way.
“With Xavi and Carles, it comes from a good place,” he said. “It shows they trust each other. The number one dysfunction of a team is absence of trust. Number two is lack of disagreement, because of absence of trust. So, they trust each other, which means you disagree. Like your brothers and sisters, you are going to disagree the closer you are.
“But that disagreement needs to happen in a better way,” Porter continued. “And it definitely doesn’t need to happen in front of 40,000 fans and on national TV. It needs to happen internally in the locker room. But I do think it is a good sign of trust, that guys are holding each other accountable, and it’s a good sign that people care. That should give people hope. You have got a group that cares, and you’ve got a coach that cares. You have got a group and a coach that are going to fight. But we cannot be as emotional as we have been and, myself included, we need to be better.”
And for his own part, Arreaga said after training that the situation between him and the captain had been resolved, echoing the coach’s sentiment on the passion he and Gil have for each other and the team.
“Carles is a really good friend,” Arreaga said. “I think we share the same passion – Carles, a Spanish guy, me a Latino guy. We always try to make things the right way. When things don’t happen the way we want them to, that’s when frustrations show. This is what happened with Carles. We’re talking about that. Everything is good with him. We’re both looking at the future, we’re looking forward to the next week.”
The Ecuadorian international also said that it would be important for him and for the whole team to leave the negatives in the past and bring a positive mindset with them into the rest of this season, starting with Saturday’s encounter with Nashville SC.
“This is a sport that brings frustrations when the results don’t show like you want them to,” Arreaga said. “That’s exactly what happened in the last couple games. Like I said, this happened, it stays in the past. Now we need to look forward and try to win this week and try to get our goal. Why not? I think, for many people, it’s over, the season. But I still believe that, why can’t we get the target?”
And Porter also expressed his hope that his first season at the helm of the Revolution could end on a high note.
“I still believe that we can win all five [games] and get in [the MLS Cup Playoffs] somehow,” he said. “That is the approach that I’m going to take. But if we don’t, we are building for the future and I expect, obviously, that we continue developing and keep building. We want to give the fans hope and something to look forward to and the right message that we are continuing to grow, and that even though this season has been difficult, there is going to be a light at the end of the tunnel.”
