The Verde Report: Can Late Goal Shake Brandon Vazquez Out of Scoring Slump?

Brandon Vazquez reacts to his winning goal late in a 1-0 Austin FC victory over LA Galaxy (courtesy of Austin FC)

Generally speaking, sports are beautifully binary. The pitch is either a strike or a ball. The pass is either caught or dropped. The serve is either in or out.

Soccer is different. No action exists in a vacuum, and nothing is as simple as pass-fail. Each pass is only as successful as its ability to lead to the next pass. Each shot is only as successful as the buildup play that preceded it. It’s a sport defined by flow and nuance.

With one exception. That is, the penalty kick.

This is soccer’s one true binary proposition. Once the referee points to the spot and the taker places the ball, nuance and context go out the window. The options are just two: score, or miss. Succeed, or fail. Do, or do not.

In the 67th minute of a match between Austin FC and LA Galaxy at Q2 Stadium over the weekend, Brandon Vazquez stepped to the spot with a chance to break a scoreless tie in favor of the home team, and missed. Failed. Did not.

It was the nadir of what, for 80 minutes, was a truly horrendous day in front of goal for Vazquez. The American international – who entered the match having scored just once for the club in 700 minutes of action – managed to direct just one of his first seven shots on frame, and squandered multiple top-notch scoring chances.

Had his day ended in that fashion, Austin FC may have left the match with a three-alarm fire on its hands: a $10 million striker in a complete crisis of confidence.

Fortunately for Vazquez and his club, substitute left back Žan Kolmanič played a low driven cross in the 81st minute that deflected off LA defender Emiro Garces directly into the path of Vazquez, who poked it past goalkeeper John McCarthy for what proved to be the winning goal.

“Ecstatic, relief, just pure happiness” is how Vazquez said he felt at that moment. “It was a roller coaster of emotions tonight, but the most important thing is to have short-term memory with this game, especially as a forward. You know, the most important play is always the next one. So just happy I was able to hit the net.”

There is one other binary (well, technically ternary) element of soccer: win, lose, or draw. Because ATXFC’s stellar defending held the Galaxy without a goal – the club’s league-leading fifth shutout in nine games – Vazquez’s early misses are all water under the bridge. He supplied the lone goal his club required for all three points.

It would do his club a tremendous amount of good if the catharsis of that late goal sparks a run of form more reminiscent of Vazquez’s FC Cincinnati days when he burst onto the scene as one of the deadliest finishers in Major League Soccer.

“I think we improved a lot on finding him in really good spots, and for him it’s, you know, it’s getting anxious to score goals,” head coach Nico Estévez said of Vazquez. “He has to just stay calm and be himself.”

Remarkably, despite the slow starts of Vazquez and fellow DP forwards Myrto Uzuni and Osman Bukari, Austin FC has still managed to win five of its first nine matches, second only to the Vancouver Whitecaps among Western Conference teams.

So far, $30 million in transfer fees has netted Austin FC just four goals between the three players. Logic and history suggests it’s just a matter of time before at least one of the trio finds some legitimate goalscoring form. If it’s Vazquez, we’ll know exactly which moment in which match his season took a wholesale turn for the better.