Buckle up, Verde fans. A fresh batch of Austin FC “firsts” is fast approaching, and it’s the good kind. After the locura that was last Friday night’s 4-1 demolition of Supporters’ Shield leaders LAFC, the Oaks rose to within one win of clinching the first playoff berth in club history. That will soon be followed – barring a catastrophic finish to the season – by the clinching of the first home playoff game in club history. Neither is too shabby at all for year two. Of all the reasons for Austin FC’s sophomore season success, and it’s a long list of them, none may be as important as the production the club is receiving from its most seasoned MLS veterans.
If it’s written anywhere that young clubs must be made up of young players, Austin FC certainly missed that memo. In fact, of the 30 active MLS players with the most career matches played in the league, four of them are currently plying their trade in Austin. Despite being well past the 250-appearance mark in their respective MLS careers, Diego Fagúndez, Maxi Urruti, Ethan Finlay, and Felipe Martins are all having seasons to remember in the Verde and Black.
“Before coming to Austin, I think a lot of people thought that my career was probably over or that it wasn’t gonna be this, how it is now. I proved a lot of people wrong,” Fagúndez said. His dozen assists – already a single-season career best – lead the Western Conference, and his six goals have come in crucial moments for Austin FC. “I know how to play soccer. I can score goals. I can give assists. But at the same time you need to feel comfortable at a team and you need to feel loved. Before I didn’t feel that. Here, in Austin, I feel the love.”
If Fagúndez felt he wasn’t properly utilized during his final years with the New England Revolution, he was not alone in that opinion. “Fagúndez playing as a 6 [or an] 8 in New England was pretty dead in the water. Not progressing. Not developing,” ATX coach Josh Wolff said. “We brought him here and worked really hard on giving him good clarity, good understanding of his role. You want to bring him into the space where he can succeed.”
That philosophy of putting players in positions of comfort and security, accentuating their strengths and mitigating their weaknesses, is at the core of what Austin FC has been under Wolff. The club has taken the same approach with Finlay and has been rewarded with his 10 goal contributions, Finlay’s best output in six years.
With Urruti, who earned Man of the Match honors Friday with two goals against LAFC, Wolff simply expressed his confidence in the veteran striker’s ability to score goals. “Maxi is a guy that came here and I said, ‘You’re a 12-goal guy. You should be scoring 12 goals in this league, given the right surroundings, the right coaching, the right environment.’ And I think you’re seeing those things come out of him,” Wolff said. Urruti is just three goals away from hitting that mark, which would tie a career best.
Even Martins, whose best contributions to a team can’t be measured statistically, has thrived in his role as a physical tone-setter and midfield conductor off the bench. Along with Fagúndez, Urruti, and Finlay, Martins is at the heart of the club’s strong core of veteran leadership.
“I think sometimes when you’re in a league for so long, people don’t realize what you can do. I think they start forgetting about it,” Fagúndez said. “I know when all of us came to Austin, it was a new challenge. … So we have to give it our best and do everything we can to help this team win, so that we can stay here for a long time.”
This article appears in September 2 • 2022.
