Facing a mountain of injuries, New England Revolution head coach Caleb Porter is leaning on young players.
That was again the case Saturday night in their Leagues Cup opener, when homegrown midfielder Jack Panayotou subbed on and scored in their 1-0 home win over LIGA MX’s Mazatlán FC.
Yet another Revolution Academy product, left back Peyton Miller, had Porter raving during his post-game press conference. The 16-year-old was likened to FC Cincinnati’s DeAndre Yedlin, a two-time World Cup veteran with the USMNT who Porter coached in college soccer at Akron.
“I knew coming in there were some good young players and I knew this kid Peyton Miller. I asked Curt [Onalfo] about him and he's like 'You're really going to like this kid. He's quick, he's a converted winger,'” Porter said, referencing a conversation with New England’s sporting director.
“I've had a lot of converted wingers – they always work well in my system. I had DeAndre Yedlin for example; he was a winger, made him into a right back. That's the profile you need – a quick guy who's been a winger and maybe isn't quite good enough to be a winger, but is perfect as an overlapping outside back.
“So when I first saw this kid Peyton in preseason, I couldn't believe he was 16 years old. I said it's too bad he wasn't healthy because he would have played 10, 12 games this year. Now you're seeing the quality and it's super exciting for the future to have this kid. The sky's the limit for him, honestly. He's as good as I've seen as a 16-year-old in his position. He's only going to get better."
Homegrown heroes
Miller, who represented the US at the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup, has only played three first-team matches. But with DeJuan Jones out injured, opportunities arise in Leagues Cup and the regular season.
Similarly, Porter highlighted 19-year-old winger Esmir Bajraktarevic amid his breakout season – especially as attackers Carles Gil, Dylan Borrero, Giacomo Vrioni and Tomás Chancalay deal with various injuries.
“Esmir's played a lot of games this year,” Porter said. “We've had to rely on him at times to carry our team. He's been excellent. He's got a bright future as well, Noel Buck has a bright future in him. Recently, Jack and Malcolm Fry have cracked in as well. I love it.”
More to come
Porter indicated an even greater youth movement awaits in New England, taking issue with a perception from his previous MLS Cup-winning stops at Portland Timbers and Columbus Crew.
“It's funny – there have been times over the years where people have said I don't play young players,” said Porter. “I have to have young players to play young players. Portland, we didn't have a ton of young players. Marco Farfan was a guy who I gave his debut. We had some international young players – Alvas Powell I played. You've just got to have young players to play them. In Columbus, we had Aidan Morris, who obviously I loved and started in an MLS Cup final. Sean Zawadzki, Isaiah Parente.
"It's great for me to have young players that are good enough. And if they're good enough, I'll play them."
Porter expects youngsters to get more opportunities, pointing to the Secondary Transfer Window. Lately, New England have been linked with a deal for Boca Juniors attacker Luca Langoni.
"We're going to keep adding young players," Porter said. "You look at our roster right now, we have 14 players over 29 years old. That's just where we're at. This is a mature group right now. It's reaching the end of a cycle. I don't want to say it's the end of this cycle, but it's reaching the end of the cycle for some of these guys – maybe that's next year at the end of the year or maybe it's this year.
"But we need to get younger in terms of our succession planning. We're going to be adding some young players in this window and a lot of young players in the offseason as well.”
