FOXBORO – In front of their largest home crowd of the season and facing Lionel Messi and Inter Miami CF, the New England Revolution fell just short Wednesday night.
Early mistakes gave Messi two goals and while the Revs got one back, they couldn’t salvage the draw and fell 2-1.
The defeat extends New England’s winless streak to five games, with four of those contests being losses.
Still, coach Caleb Porter feels his team is nearly there.
“We still have a lot of games left and after I was done talking to the group, Carles (Gil) stood up and I thought was excellent,” Porter said. “He said, when you look at the best teams in the league, we’ve played well enough to win (against them) and we can go on to win these future games.”
Here are four takeaways from Wednesday’s match against Miami.
Another tight loss against top competition
Over the last month, the Revs have played the top two teams in the Eastern Conference in Cincinnati and Nashville, a top four team in the West in Portland, and a Miami squad that’s fifth in the East but has three games in hand.
New England has lost all of those games by a combined four goals and have kept up in all of them.
Against the Herons on Wednesday, the Revs led in shots, shots on goal, and expected goals, but walked away empty-handed.
“At the end of the day we just outplayed one of the best teams in the league and I think that’s the thing keeping me encouraged,” Porter said. “We faced the best teams in the east and we haven’t been overmatched against any of them.”
New England though still hasn’t reached that next level to beat those teams in the highest tier of the league. For Porter that comes down to the minute executions.
“What we have to continue to get right is the boxes and the details,” Porter said. “We had massive chances today to score and we got to finish and we can’t make that early mistake.
“To me it feels obviously low because we lost but I can tell you the team in there is very confident. I’m disappointed we didn’t win but when you don’t win against a very good team and have the better of it, the confidence remains.”
Messi cleans up on defensive mistakes
While Messi scored twice for Miami, it was not him and his teammates simply overmatching New England. His two goals came from rather frustrating mistakes by the Revs, and up until his first goal in the 27th minute, Porter loved the way his team was performing against him.
“For the first 27 minutes everything went exactly as planned,” Porter said. “They weren’t creating anything, they had a bit of the ball which was the plan and then we make a big mistake.
“It’s not a goal where they break us down, it was a giveaway. It was a header right to Messi 20 yards from the goal and he’s going to score those 10 out of 10 times.”
After allowing the first goal, Porter found his squad getting out of sorts. As his backline moved higher and higher up the pitch, Miami made sure to take advantage.
As Messi made a run, Sergio Busquets found his longtime teammate perfectly, passing from beyond midfield to assist the goal.
“I thought we lost a little bit of discipline for five minutes from there which led to our lines being a little higher,” Porter said. “And there, a very good run, good final pass. We’re talking about the best players in the world and they’ll punish ya.
“But I do think that if we stayed disciplined at one and don’t get our lines too high and continue with the plan and the second goal doesn’t come.”
Leo Campana out of sorts against his former squad
Facing Miami for the first time since being traded to New England in the offseason, Leo Campana was just off for the Revs.
The 24-year-old striker took four shots against the Herons, missing poorly on two and having his shot stopped sharply by goalkeeper Oscar Ustari on the others.
He was one of several Revs that looked slightly off when the net was in range. In total, New England fired off 16 shots Wednesday night, but Carles Gil was the only one able to be Ustari.
“Overall the chances were there, we doubled them on shots on goal, we had a lot more expected goals.” Porter said. “The ones we had today those weren’t half chances. We have to keep the confidence up, that’s key.”
“It’s just Leo scoring one and we get a little more confident. (Tomas) Chancalay is in out of rhythm so there’s stuff like that.”
As with Campana’s drought to start the season, it seems the longer the cold stretch continues, the more pressure there is on himself.
while the striker has dealt with injuries over the past two months, he has now gone six games without scoring a goal and have just two in 13 appearances this season.
Revs drop another at home
As the Revs try to break their overall winless streak, the specter of their home performances continues to grow larger.
New England is now 2-5-2 at Gillette Stadium this season and has not won at home since beating New York City FC 2-0 on April 19.
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