New England Revolution at DC United 5/28/25

DC tries to break its four game scoreless streak

Game Context

The New England Revolution were unbeaten in seven regular season games, but that stretch started with four straight wins and then had three straight draws, and those draws also had an Open Cup loss mixed in, so the vibes weren’t quite as good one might think. They were out of playoff position but still five points better than DC.

DC United had a streak of its own: four straight regular season games without scoring a goal. They got 0-0 draws in two of those games, but the most recent game was a toothless home loss to the New York Red Bulls where as soon as a single goal was scored the game felt lost.

According to the MLS power rankings, this featured #15 (New England) vs. #27 (DC United).

Formation

Luis Barraza started in goal, backed up by Jordan Farr after Kim Joon Hong suffered what sounds like a minor injury during pregame warmups. Then it was the usual 5-2-3, with Kye Rowles, Lucas Bartlett, and Aaron Herrera playing as the three centerbacks and Conner Antley and Derek Dodson the left and right wingbacks respectively. Boris Enow and Brandon Servania played in central midfield behind a front three of Peglow, Jacob Murrell, and Hosei Kijima.

The two mildly unexpected starters were Dodson and Antley starting as wingbacks, plus the move of Herrera to centerback. I assume this was to rest David Schnegg and Garrison Tubbs, though Tubbs’ mistake that led to a goal against New York might have been a factor. It’s especially disappointing for Herrera to play farther from goal when the team needs more offense, but that might have also been a fatigue consideration since he doesn’t have to run nearly as much as a centerback.

With DC having gone down a goal in first half stoppage time, David Schnegg came in at halftime for Dodson and played left wingback, moving Antley to the right.

After 66 minutes and still down, Randall Leal subbed on for Antley and the team switched to a four man backline with Schnegg and Herrera as fullbacks. I believe this was a 4-5-1 with Leal playing as an attacking midfielder in front of Enow and Servania.

At about the 74th minute, Jared Stroud and Kristian Fletcher replaced Hosei Kijima and Jacob Murrell, respectively, in like-for-like substitutions (though Fletcher is a fairly different kind of player from Murrell). Then in the 81st minute, Gabriel Pirani replaced Peglow and I guess theoretically played at the left wing, but by this point Lucas Bartlett was also frequently coming forward so players were all over the place.

Expected Goals

Overall, expected goals were essentially tied, though DC United technically edged New England by a hair, 1.17 to 1.14. This was despite DC outshooting New England 20-13. A lot of those shots were outside the box, and 11 of those 20 DC shots were blocked as well.

New England had more xG in the first half (0.36 - 0.70) and 7 shots to DC’s 6. In the second half, with New England playing much more conservatively, DC had 0.81 xG to New Englands’s 0.44 and 14 shots to their 6.

Gabriel Pirani’s goal was scored at just 0.05 xG, coming outside the box. I don’t think that even takes into account the shot being with his weaker left foot. Opta scored the placement as being 0.63 post-shot expected goals. The placement was good, but it needed to be combined with power. DC’s highest xG shot came just a minute earlier, Pirani’s 0.20 xG shot after he dribbled into the box that was blocked and went out for a corner.

Ilay Feingold’s goal was 0.47 xG, but the post-shot expected goals was considered 0.99. I guess that’s because Opta is including the fact that the goalkeeper was out? Or because it got deflected? I don’t know. That was the Revolution’s best chance. Luis Díaz had their second best attempt (0.23 xG) in the second half with the shot that Barraza saved at about 68 minutes.

Goal Breakdowns

45+3’ Ilay Feingold 0-1

Carles Gil has the ball just inside the New England half near DC’s left sideline. Boris Enow is nearby and has been hounding Gil throughout the first half. He’ll go on to hound him for all of the second half too, but here, maybe because it’s just two minutes from halftime, he doesn’t close immediately.

Gil plays the ball up to midfielder Tomás Chancalay, who is showing for the ball but marked closely by Kye Rowles. Chancalay taps it back to Gil, and Enow, having followed the ball towards Chancalay, again doesn’t race to close down Gil. Revolution right back Brandon Bye is racing down the sideline into the space that Rowles vacated and after a few touches Carles Gil slots a perfectly weighted through ball.

To his credit, Conner Antley is alert to this possibility the moment Bye starts making his run, but to his, uh, non-credit, instead of just running with Bye, he waits and tries to make a sliding interception of the pass he’s correctly anticipated. But it’s just a bit too far away from him and it passes between him and Rowles, leaving Bye in acres of space at the left edge of DC’s box.

That’s not great, but honestly this kind of thing happens to DC United a lot, and in real time it didn’t seem that dangerous to me. Carles Gil is the only deadly player on New England and because he set up the play he is now far, far behind it. New England only has one guy in the box, forward Ignatius Ganago, and he’s closely marked by Aaron Herrera. Lucas Bartlett is just a hair behind the play but is sprinting back to do his trademark emergency defending. Derek Dodson has also rushed back and is available to help as well.

Unfortunately, Luis Barraza comes flying off his line. You can’t quite see on the broadcast but I think he only starts once the ball goes past Antley. This is a bad mistake. Because Bartlett is going to be able to get in position if Bye tries to dribble inward, charging out really only makes sense if Barraza can get to the ball before Bye, and he’s not even close to getting there first. He makes himself big and I guess does a good job taking away any shot on goal, but Brandon Bye has far more MLS starts than shots taken and probably wasn’t even thinking of shooting. Instead, he tries to play the ball across to Ganago.

That wasn’t his best option. Herrera is marking Ganago too tightly for the ball to get there, and even if he wasn’t, Lucas Bartlett—seeing his goalkeeper charging out for no reason—has adjusted his pursuit angle so that instead of challenging Bye he’s also taking away the pass. The pass can’t possibly reach Ganago. Bye tries it anyway.

His pass hits Bartlett’s heel and is deflected slightly away from goal. It’s still within reach of Herrera, but he can’t react quickly enough to the deflection and the ball bounces off his feet and drifts upfield past the penalty spot. This is where Bye should have put the ball in the first place, but the nice thing about low, driven crosses is sometimes you get helpful deflections. In this case, it ends up right into the path of young left back Ilay Feingold (and even if he hadn’t made the hard run to get there, Chancalay would have also had a great chance to score). Feingold runs on to the ball and slots it into what is technically an open goal (since Barraza is completely out of the play) but actually has three DC defenders blocking much of the right side. He hits it to the left. Very sensible, but not everyone is so calm when they get the opportunity to score their first professional goal.

But enough about him! Who do we blame here? Not Bartlett or Herrera, in my opinion: these things happen. And Rowles was right to follow Chancalay. Almost all the blame has to lie with Barraza. Now it’s true that if all the same things happened and Barraza stayed on his line, Feingold would still have a dangerous opportunity and maybe would have hit it better, but the shot he did take was savable. Actually, though, if Barraza stayed on his line, Bartlett would have been challenging Bye. Either he doesn’t quite get there in time and so the ball goes through clean to Herrera, who then would almost certainly clear the ball, or if Bartlett does deflect it again, at least Herrera would have more time to react.

So I give most of the blame of Barraza, but Conner Antley also gets a little blame for gambling on a dramatic interception and missing the ball entirely. If he’d stayed on his feet and run after Bye, I don’t think Barraza panics and the situation would be even safer with an extra defender in the mix.

90+1’ Gabriel Pirani 1-1

As the game hits 90 minutes, the Revolution are pinned back in their bunker. Servania is playing centerback so that Bartlett can join the frontline as an emergency forward. He passes it to Aaron Herrera, who sends a long cross to the far side of the box. Brandon Bye plants his feet as the ball comes toward him and thinks he’ll be able to head it, but David Schnegg flashes in front of him to cleanly win the ball and head it back toward the top of the box.

Jared Stroud chests it down and then as it bounces, hits a side volley. New England centerback Tanner Beason blocks the shot with a slightly ducked head. The ball rolls out of the top of the box on the left side. Lucas Bartlett and Gabriel Pirani are about the same distance away, but Bartlett has his back to goal and fortunately sees that Pirani has the better angle and steps aside. Behind him, David Schnegg does the same, doing his best to clear a shooting lane to the far post. Instead, Pirani smashes a left-footed shot straight into the upper corner of the near post. New England goalkeeper Aljaž Ivačič is in a good position and dives but the power of the shot is such he can’t even get a finger on it.

By the standards of a bunkering team, the Revolution did pretty well in the last ten minutes, blocking a lot of shots and mounting some vaguely dangerous counterattacks. But the problem with bunkering is you never know where loose balls are going to end up, and on this play, the ball ended up with the only DC player on the field who has shown any ability to score goals off loose balls in the box.

Usually that’s where I stop with these breakdowns, but much has been said about Pirani’s celebration, so let’s keep the close scrutiny going. It actually starts out like someone mashing buttons after scoring a goal in FIFA. There’s a few seconds of the airplane, then as he bends his run back toward the benches he grabs his jersey and, I’m pretty sure, he kisses the DC United badge.

Then he motions for someone coming to celebrate to give him space as he runs farther towards the benches. In real time at Audi Field, I was watching this in fascination.

A few years ago, Christian Pulisic scored a goal after a rough patch with Chelsea and sprinted toward the benches like this. As I recall it (I didn’t try to find the clip, sorry) the coach, Thomas Tuchel, held out his arms for hug, but instead Pulisic ignored him and jumped into the arms of some other member of the staff. It was a super-awkward but super-public visualization of their bad relationship.

So in the stadium, I’m like, is he really going to hug Troy Lesesne? It would be cool but…would not really fit with my sense of Pirani’s vibe. Would he bypass Lesesne for, I don’t know, Zack Prince or something? Well, he didn’t do any of that. Instead, as he approaches the benches, he starts yelling and pumping both arms. He deftly dodges Peglow and some other subs who are trying to congratulate him, then swings around and continues pumping his arms and yelling. The Apple TV broadcast makes it clear he’s looking at Troy Lesesne as he does this.

I know it’s blurry but that’s Lesesne in the foreground

What was he shouting? It doesn’t look like much more than “YEAH” or “LET’S GO” or their Portuguese equivalents. I think “I hope you saw that!” is the most complex thought I could imagine being expressed here, and maybe there isn’t even enough enunciation for that.

People are wondering: Does this staredown mean he hates Lesesne? Has Lesesne lost the locker room? Does Pirani want off the team? Does the team want to get rid of him?

Lesesne’s only comment even indirectly about the celebration was to say, “You can see what it means to him.” Maybe that was being very polite, but I think the most likely explanation is that Pirani’s celebration really was mostly “YEAH” with just a little dose of “you should be playing me more, boss” as opposed to “SEE, YOU SUCK” as some have interpreted it. And if he wanted off the team, kissing the badge is an odd way to show it.

In any case, Pirani has a history of this kind of behavior. When he scored last July against FC Cincinnati after a long run of getting only a few minutes off the bench, he raised the back of his shirt to show his name in a moment that is still part of the stadium jumbotron hype package but—if memory serves, because the game highlights don’t make it clear—I am pretty sure he was aiming it at the coaches bench with a clear “pay attention, this name should be in the starting lineup” subtext. And maybe it worked, because he actually did start the next match (a road game against Orlando City that, uh, DC lost 0-5.

“Gabi does make special plays,” Troy Lesesne said in the post-game press conference. He’s normally very filtered but I interpret his emphasis there as unintentionally communicating his negative opinion about Pirani’s ability to make normal plays this season. But mostly he just said the obvious: Pirani was a starter at the beginning of the season, then he was benched (along with some other players) when the team wasn’t doing well, then he got hurt, but now he’s back, and this is a great moment for him.

My tentative conclusion is that everything is probably fine. If only because if Lesesne had lost either the locker room as a whole or Pirani in particular, this moment wouldn’t have happened. The goal is only scored due to maximum effort in the dying moments of a losing game from Herrera, Schnegg, Stroud, Pirani, and even Bartlett. They are still committed.

Player Ratings

Starters

Luis Barraza - 4 - He had one pretty good save, changing direction and diving to keep a ball out and then getting clattered into by a Revolution player for his trouble. Otherwise, he had his usual issues when kicking long and to me bears most of the blame for the goal. Joon is hurt with what is hopefully a short-term injury, but Joon is better with his feet and has lots of potential to improve. Joon also gave up cheap goals. Barraza doesn’t seem like he’s going to get a lot better at this point, so the point of playing him is that he doesn’t give up cheap goals. Much more of this and DC might as well play Joon.

Conner Antley - 5 - He’s more effective at wingback than Derek Dodson, for whatever that’s worth, but—stamina permitting—I would have liked to see him at centerback and Herrera playing wingback. My conviction there has wavered a little bit after his failed gamble on the Revolution’s goal, though.

Kye Rowles - 6 - He seems to have cleaned up the occasional turnovers that were plaguing him earlier in the season. He still got a yellow card, though. He leads the team in yellows and is tied with two other players for the league lead with 7 yellow cards on the season.

Lucas Bartlett - 5 - He had a couple missed clearances and in general his passing hasn’t been very good in the past few games. I’m tempted to blame fatigue. He’s still a good emergency defender and, with Benteke out, the only player on the field who usually wins aerial duels.

Aaron Herrera - 5 - Second on the team in shot creation with four despite playing centerback for much of the game. He played well but I think he’s really been run into the ground by all these games in May. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be suspended for the weekend match in Cincinnati thanks to the very soft yellow card he received in the first half, so he’ll get some time to recharge.

Derek Dodson - 3 - He ran hard and aggressively contested aerial duels (but didn’t win any). Only 15 touches in the half he played and was just 7 for 12 passing. We’re almost halfway through the season and he still looks out of his depth in MLS.

Boris Enow - 6 - He had, I felt, a rough stretch of games plagued by turnovers and periods where he didn’t provide enough defensively. I wasn’t sure why Lesesne kept starting him, but I thought Enow looked better against New York and even better in this game. He was most often the player trying to keep a lid on Carles Gil, a tough task for even the best midfielders, and—other than stoppage time in the first half—he fought hard and mostly got the better of it. Before Leal came on and took over a lot of the offensive responsibilities in midfield, I also thought Enow had one of his better games progressing the ball.

Brandon Servania - 5 - Continues to be a good defensive presence and connector, but doesn’t offer much going forward. Separately, I think he was struggling physically in the second half and it would have been good to see him replaced by Peltola or Kijima.

Peglow - 6 - I’ve said it before, but Peglow is the perfect complementary attacker for Troy Lesesne’s system. He offers some real danger on the wing, especially when he can combine with short passes, he scores the occasional spectacular goal, yet he is also a very willing defender. His clean tackle of Carles Gil in the second half earned him a huge roar from the tiny crowd and it’s not a really a play any of the other attackers can make (Stroud and Kijima would try but not succeed, while most of the others wouldn’t work hard enough to get into a position to try it). So yeah, great TAM player. But it’s pretty grim when he’s the best attacking player for DC by a large margin, as in the first half. Ally Mackay has been getting a lot of fan criticism lately and a lot of it is deserved, but Peglow is an example of a player who has been worth more on the field than DC paid for him. It’s just that he should be the third or fourth best attacker. Instead, he spent the first half trying to combine with Jacob Murrell and Conner Antley.

Hosei Kijima - 5 - Kijima makes great runs, but his teammates almost never see them. He also has good ideas when he has the ball, but his own technical ability often lets him down when he tries to execute them. I’d like to see him get more time with a player like Randall Leal who might be able to reward more of his runs, but at least Kijima is getting lots of minutes. He’s young enough to hope for some more improvement.

Jacob Murrell - 4 - Another young guy getting valuable experience, but man, until he learns how to handle MLS centerbacks better, he’s almost completely ineffective. As one of the three people on the roster who has proven he can shoot, his proper role right now is to be thrown on late in a game when DC needs a goal to be an extra person in the box, not be the sole focus of centerbacks.

Substitutes

David Schnegg - 5 - There was a play early in the second half where he was on the sideline to receive a pass and it just bounced off his leg and went out of bounds. This kind of thing happens frequently with him. As frustrating as that is, he brings a lot offensively that, say, Derek Dodson doesn’t. His best weapon is his crosses, but without Benteke, they aren’t providing a ton of value at the moment. Still, he won the header to set up the tying goal and was probably a few inches away from winning the game a minute later when his shot of another loose ball in the box was (I think) partially blocked.

Randall Leal - 6 - My complaint with Leal has been that, even in sub appearances, he seems to drift in and out of games. He only played 25 minutes but was very involved throughout, so I’ll consider that a positive step forward. He’s the team’s best possession attacker (a low bar, admittedly) and with Benteke still a long way from being back, DC desperately needs him to be able to play more productive minutes. I could do without the long-range shots that seem to always turn into field goal attempts, though.

Jared Stroud - 5 - I still don’t think he should start, but I thought this was a better substitute performance from him. Good movement, 13 for 16 passing, and he led the team in shot-creating actions, including one for the goal (his shot that was blocked over to Pirani).

Kristian Fletcher - 4 - In theory, he offers a different profile than Murrell, but the team is built around big, slow forwards and doesn’t seem able to use his comparative speed at all. Lesesne recently said his natural position is winger, which makes sense. At forward right now—like Murrell—he isn’t much more than a decoy for centerbacks.

Gabriel Pirani - 7 - He probably should have come on earlier, but it was the perfect game state for him as he has been at his best for DC when there’s some space and he can aggressively carry the ball. Mark Machado criticized him for one of those carries, I guess because he didn’t pass to Schnegg? Personally, in that moment I wanted Pirani to shoot, not pass. If Benteke had been there that would be one thing, but when Pirani’s options are David Schnegg and Lucas Bartlett, I want him to shoot. Pirani makes some frustrating mistakes, like a play a few minutes later where he failed to control what seemed like an easy ball in the open field, but he’s done a lot of damage over the past year shooting from near the edge of the box, and he did it again this game.

Other

Troy Lesesne - 5 - DC United looked like the better team from the start of the match, and except for losing concentration during first half stoppage time, that continued throughout. I think Lesesne deserves some credit for that, especially since the best player on the field was clearly Carles Gil. DC came out with a pretty good anti-Gil gameplan and executed it well throughout—except, again, first-half stoppage time. There was an embarrassing moment in the postgame press conference, though, when Jason Anderson asked a great question: for the first sub, why not sub out Servania given his physical issues and move Kijima back? From Lesesne’s answer, he and the staff didn’t seem to realize Servania was having problems until they were out of subs. Oops.

Standings

Despite getting a point to reach 15 points, DC United remains 13th in the Eastern Conference, two points behind Atlanta United in 12th. Toronto FC, in 14th, is just two points behind. DC is seven points back from Charlotte FC, the current occupant of the 9th place playoff spot with 22 points.

DC is 25th in the Supporters’ Shield standings, tied on points with Real Salt Lake but way below them on goal difference. There are only five worse teams in MLS, and three of them have fired their coaches already (CF Montréal, Sporting Kansas City, and this week St. Louis City).

Coming Up

On Saturday, DC United faces a very tough match as they travel to FC Cincinnati. In the first match this season at Audi Field, DC was clearly second-best but only lost 0-1. Cincinnati didn’t have Evander for that game, though. Still, that first match was square in the middle of five straight wins for Cincinnati, whereas their form lately hasn’t been as good, losing 2-4 to Atlanta United last weekend on the road and drawing FC Dallas 3-3 at home.

Afterward, DC United finally gets to rest during the week before playing Gregg Berhalter’s Chicago Fire at Audi Field. The following weekend, it’s one of MLS’ toughest road trips to visit the otherwise-not-very-good Real Salt Lake.