New England Revolution is a professional soccer team in the United States. Soccer is called football in much of the world. The team competes in the Eastern Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS), the top soccer league in the United States and Canada. The team plays its home games at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
The New England Revolution, also called the Revs, was one of the founding teams of MLS in 1996. The team enjoyed little success in its early seasons, making brief MLS Cup Playoffs appearances in 1997 and 2000. In 2002, the Revs began a streak of eight-straight playoff appearances. The club reached the MLS Cup final in 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007, but lost each time. The club won the 2007 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, an annual tournament open to amateur and professional soccer clubs in the United States. The Revs returned to the MLS Cup final in 2014, but lost again. In 2021, the Revs won the Supporters’ Shield as the MLS team with the best regular season record, but the club was eliminated in the playoffs.
The MLS Cup final appearances in 2002 and 2005 qualified New England for the CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football) Champions Cup, an annual tournament among that region’s best professional clubs. The tournament was renamed the Champions League in 2008.
