There is no more rewarding feeling as a sports fan than watching your favorite team achieve its ultimate goal and lift a trophy. It’s the ultimate validation of the emotional, financial, and time investments fans put into their teams. The next best thing, however, might be what Austin FC fans are currently being treated to: watching a young, homegrown player realize his or her potential and mature into something seriously special.
Owen Wolff is becoming that before our eyes. The 20-year-old, who had been the club’s most consistent attacking chance-creator all season, has reached another level lately.
Over the weekend, Austin FC won its second match in a row, coming back from a 0-1 deficit to defeat Sporting Kansas City 2-1 on the road. It amounted to three more crucial points and another giant step toward the club reaching the MLS Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2022. And Wolff was right at the center of it.
First, he scored a beauty of an equalizing goal in the 37th minute, plucking a long ball out of the air with his right foot, settling it into space at the top of the 18-yard box, then ripping a left-footed shot past goalkeeper John Pulskamp into the corner of the goal. It was, as Apple TV commentator Taylor Twellman phrased it on the broadcast, “brilliant work.”
Later, in the 82nd minute, Wolff delivered his seventh assist of the season on what amounted to the winning goal. Off a corner kick, Wolff drove a cross to the near post, meeting the run of CJ Fodrey, who flicked his header into the net for Fodrey’s first career MLS goal.
With his goal and assist in Kansas City, Wolff has now produced eight goal contributions in the club’s last seven matches since July 16, the most of any MLS player under the age of 25. In that span, ATXFC has taken 16 out of a possible 21 points and shot up the table in the Western Conference from battling for a spot in the 8 vs. 9 play-in game to now sitting comfortably inside the top 7.
It’s been a fine spell for the club as a whole – from manager Nico Estévez to designated players Myrto Uzuni and Osman Bukari to role players like Fodrey – but Wolff has been the biggest revelation by far. And he’s earned the adulations of Verde fans in the process.
But here’s the catch. Unlike in other sports where, for example, a hit NBA draft pick or a dynamite MLB prospect could become a star for their team for 10-plus years, soccer is a world of change. Players as good and as young as Wolff just don’t stay put. They make high-profile, high-dollar transfers to Europe to play among the world’s best.
They do so because it’s their dream, and also because it usually benefits the club they are departing.
Last week, when speaking to reporters, Austin FC sporting director Rodolfo Borrell lamented the club’s lack of salary cap resources in comparison to other clubs.
“The only way of adding more GAM [general allocation money] is selling players. And we are in a club that we haven’t been selling players,” Borrell said. And while he did not specify Wolff by name, he added that there will come a time when Austin FC will likely have to part with a “fan favorite” in order to “keep moving the wheel of the system of how it works.”
However, Borrell was adamant that he won’t sell players unless the offers are for fair value. And the way Wolff has been playing lately, that price tag isn’t going anywhere but up.
Austin FC next faces FC Dallas at Toyota Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 13, 7:30pm.
This article appears in September 12 • 2025.