New England Revolution qualify for 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup. Who will they be facing?

Since the 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup - previously known as the “Concacaf Champions League” - expanded and now includes 27 top clubs from North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, the New England Revolution qualified for the tournament because of their sixth-overall finish in the 2023 MLS regular season standings.

The Revolution’s spot in the tournament was only secured on Saturday night when the Columbus Crew SC squeezed past Los Angeles FC, 2-1, to win the 2023 MLS Cup and earn the automatic bid as league champions. Because the Crew had already qualified thanks to their third-place finish, and therefore could not hold two spots, the Revolution became the MLS’ 10th-and-final representative.

There are few good memories from the last time the Revs played in this competition in 2022. They advanced to the quarterfinals when Haiti’s Cavaly team was unable to travel to Foxborough and forfeited the game.

The first leg of the quarterfinals saw the Revolution crush Mexico’s Pumas UNAM, 3-0. But then everything went wrong in the second leg, in Mexico, and the Revolution fell by the same 3-0 score, forcing a decision via penalty kicks, where the hosts prevailed, 4-3.

Draw delivers Round One matchups, New England Revolution to face Panama champion

The draw for the first round was held on Saturday and the Revolution drew Club Atlético Independiente, the champions of Panama. The first leg will be played on February 6 while the return game is scheduled for Feb. 29. No times have been set yet.

Whoever wins this tie will face Costa Rica’s LD Alajuelense. Created in 1919, Alajuelense is the only club to have at least one Championship title in each decade in Costa Rica.

In the release announcing the results of the draw, the Revolution revealed that “Independiente makes its second appearance in Champions Cup, its first since 2019. The Panamanian side, based in La Chorrera outside of Panama City, qualified for this year’s tournament after reaching the semifinals of the 2023 Central American Cup. Founded in 1982, Independiente is a six-time Liga Panameña champion, having won the last three straight league titles in Panama’s topflight.”

The first four rounds will all include home and away play, only the Final will be a single game matchup.

Five teams - Inter Miami and the Columbus Crew from MLS, LD Alajuelense, Pachuca from Mexico and Robin Hood from Suriname - had byes in the first round.

The round of 16 will be played in March.

The early dates will be a problem for the 10 MLS teams because of a lack of competitive rhythm. No date has yet been released for the opening week of play, but it will likely be either the end of February or the beginning of March. This past season opening day was on Feb. 25, the previous year it was on Feb. 26.

To prepare for the season, currently 10 MLS clubs are scheduled to compete in a 2024 preseason event in California at Indio's Empire Polo Club. Those pre-season games are scheduled for Feb. 4-17, but the Revolution are not in that group and have not unveiled their pre-season plans.

The other nine MLS teams in the Champions are: Inter Miami, Columbus Crew, Nashville SC, Philadelphia Union, Houston Dynamo, FC Cincinnati, St. Louis City SC and Vancouver Whitecaps.

Mexico is represented by Pachuca, Toluca, Club America, Monterrey, Chivas and Tigres.

In addition to the Vancouver Whitecaps, who qualified by winning the 2023 Canadian Championship, Canada is also represented by Cavalry FC and Forge FC.

Costa Rica’s teams are: Herediano, Alajuelense and Saprissa.

All the other countries have only one representative: Panama (Independiente), Nicaragua (Real Esteli), Guatemala (Comunicaciones), Jamaica (Cavalier), Suriname (Robinhood) and Dominican Republic (Moca FC).

New England Revolution still looking for a coach

The departure of former Coach/Sporting Director Bruce Arena left the Revolution without a coach. Curt Onalfo, who has 20 years of front office and coaching experience and has been the Revolution’s Technical Director for the past four seasons, was appointed a couple of weeks ago as the club’s new Sporting Director. Getting the new coach will be his first major decision.

“The search started yesterday,” Onalfo said on Dec. 1 when he met with the media after being introduced as Sporting Director, a position that was also held by Bruce Arena, “and we want to make sure we have a coach in place prior to the start of preseason, so January is the timeline to have a coach in place. [We want] a strong character, strong leadership; a very good tactical understanding on the offensive part of the field, as well as the defensive part – the game is always changing and evolving – and the ability to manage big personalities and big players.

“We’re a big club and one that has a track record, so those are some of the qualities we will be looking for in our head coach. We’ve had end-of-season meetings with all our players. It was a challenging year, as we all know, but everybody is extremely optimistic about the future. All the qualities I talked about and what we’re looking at for a head coach, that’s what the players want, so we will hire the right coach, and we’ll be on the right track.”

Revolution makes year-end roster decisions

As required by the league, on that same day Onalfo and New England Revolution President Brian Bilello also announced the year-end roster decisions, which included exercising the options on six players and adding three new Homegrown Players to bring the current roster to 27 players.

The roster has 17 players who already had guaranteed contracts for 2024, namely Esmir Bajraktarevic, Joshua Bolma, Dylan Borrero, Noel Buck, Brandon Bye, Earl Edwards Jr., DeJuan Jones, Mark-Anthony Kaye, Henry Kessler, Tommy McNamara, Nacho Gil, Jack Panayotou, Matt Polster, Dave Romney, Tomáš Vaclík, Giacomo Vrioni and Bobby Wood.

The Revolution elected to exercise the one-year contract options on five players: Andrew Farrell, Carles Gil, Jacob Jackson, Damian Rivera, and Ryan Spaulding.

In addition, the club also exercised the two-year contract option on midfielder Ian Harkes, which will keep him with the club until 2025.

One of the more important decisions dealt with the status of Argentinian forward Tomás Chancalay, who had six goals in 11appearances after arriving on August 26, on loan from Argentina’s Racing Club. His strong showing convinced the club to exercise the permanent transfer option. He was signed to an official Designated Player through the 2026 Major League Soccer season.

“Tomas performed admirably in his first season in New England and possesses both the natural attacking instincts and technical prowess to be an elite attacking talent in our league,” Onalfo said in a release.

“Based on his productivity and performance during his first season with the Revolution, it was a straightforward decision to extend his time in New England. We look forward to watching Tomas continue to flourish with the Revolution in the years ahead.”

The three new Homegrown Players are Peyton Miller, Santiago “Tiago” Suarez, and Malcolm Fry.

On the other hand, the Revolution decided not to exercise the contract options on Emmanuel Boateng, Maciel, Christian Makoun, Ben Reveno and Ben Sweat.

The three players are out of contract after the 2023 season: Gustavo Bou, Omar Gonzalez, and Justin Rennicks.

Obviously, Gustavo Bou would be a huge loss because he has been very productive when available as in his 108 league appearances for the Revolution, from 2019-2023, the Argentinian striker had 48 goals and 21 assists.

There is still a slight possibility that he will return, but the situation was further complicated when Chancalay was signed as a Designated Player, giving the team the league maximum of three, as Chancalay joins Carles Gil and Giacomo Vrioni as DPs.

“Gustavo was a player that I was instrumental in bringing here to the club and I have a strong, very close relationship with Gustavo and love Gustavo,” Onalfo said. “But the minute we picked up the option and bought Tomas Chancalay, that meant we had 3 DPs. At that point, it makes it much more difficult to sign a player like Gustavo Bou and his quality, but I stay open-minded that there still could be a possibility [he returns].”

On Monday, the Revolution added veteran defender Nick Lima in a trade with Austin FC, filing one of their needs.

Lima, 29, made 195 regular season appearances with Austin (2021-2023) and the San Jose Earthquakes (2017-2020), and in addition to being a solid defender he is also very effective going forward. Lima matched Revolution left defender DeJuan Jones’ five assists and the two are one of only five MLS defenders to register five assists the past two seasons.

“Nick Lima has proven to be a dependable defender in Major League Soccer over the last seven years and has been a steady presence on the backline for both of his previous clubs”, Onalfo said in a release.“With the ability to play at either outside back position, we foresee Nick making important contributions to our squad and bolstering our defensive unit in a key area for the 2024 season.”As he looks ahead to the upcoming days and the roster moves that will be forthcoming, Onalfo sounded pleased with his roster.

“We’re very confident in the roster that we have,” Onalfo told the media. “We’ve made some roster moves just recently. We have currently 27 players on our roster. We have a strong roster, so we feel very, very good about it. Obviously, we’re always going to be looking to enhance every part of the organization, every single position.”

There should be some personnel moves in the next few days because the MLS trade window opened on Monday and the MLS Free Agency opened on Wednesday. In addition, the MLS Re-Entry Process had its Stage 1 yesterday and Stage 2 will be on Thursday, Dec. 21.

Next week, on Tuesday, MLS will hold its SuperDraft 2024, so it is likely that the Revolution will pick up a couple of new players before the end of the year.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: New England Revolution qualify for 2024 Concacaf Champions Cup