The Verde Report: “Poor Performances” Spell Doom for Austin FC, Josh Wolff in Crushing Loss

Osman Bukari during the Aug. 31 home loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps (courtesy of Austin FC)

Saturday night at Q2 Stadium was exactly the kind of evening Austin FC couldn’t afford.

The Verde and Black came up short in an exceedingly winnable matchup against the Vancouver Whitecaps, falling by a score of 1-0 in a match where the home team registered exactly zero shots on target.

For weeks we’ve pointed out something that head coach Josh Wolff and his squad are surely aware of: The margin for error is simply too thin for the club to survive nights like that.

Sure, ATXFC is still mathematically alive in the playoff hunt – in fact, they’re still just one spot and two points below the line with seven matches to go. But from a pure likelihood standpoint, Austin simply needed that game.

PlayoffStatus.com, which tracks teams’ probabilities of making the postseason relative to remaining opponents, now has Austin FC at just a 13% chance of finishing ninth or better. That’s largely due to the fact that, according to the site, ATX has the most difficult remaining schedule in the West, having still to face each of the top four teams in the conference standings.

So, with so much riding on a winnable match on home turf, how did Austin FC let that one get away?

“I think we had a lot of poor performances tonight,” Wolff said after the match. “I’m not talking one or two. We had six or seven guys that just performed well below how we’ve been performing lately ... When you have that many poor performances it’s going to be challenging to compete.”

Wolff probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s said the quiet part out loud. He may think, by opting to point the finger at his players rather than himself, that he’s shielding himself from some of the blame. In reality, he’s opened himself up to more criticism than ever.

Coaches are responsible for many things. Among them, certainly, is a duty to study the opposition, come up with a game plan, and impart that plan to your players. This is Wolff’s comfort zone, and his best attribute. Naturally, when players play poorly, the planning often becomes obsolete.

But coaches are also responsible for making sure their players are up for the task at hand, sufficiently motivated and confident. What’s that old saying? One bad performance is chance. Two bad performances is a coincidence. Six or seven? That’s a pattern – a pattern of inadequate coaching. If Wolff can’t figure out how to prevent that when the stakes are highest, then Austin FC will have no choice but to search for someone else who can.

At this point, it’s going to take a monumental – almost out-of-character – effort over the final seven games for Austin FC to make the playoffs. We’ll learn a lot about Wolff, and the players he’s coaching, between now and then.

Can he hit enough of the right notes to get his players in a position to play their best soccer of the season down the stretch? Are the players interested in fighting for their coach’s future, knowing that a missed postseason could be the straw that breaks the #WolffOut camel’s back?

One thing’s for sure, any more outcomes like the one against Vancouver would go a long way toward effectively wrapping up a season to forget for the Verde and Black.

Austin FC next faces Toronto FC at BMO Field on September 14.