If optimistic Austin FC fans had visions of an eight-month thrill ride in 2024, Saturday’s season-opening match was a tall glass of flat beer to the face. The latest chapter in the Book of Verde certainly suggested that Volume IV might be another dreary, ponderous tome.
The Austin Football Club slogged its way to a 2-1 defeat against Minnesota United at Q2 Stadium in the first regular season match of the club’s fourth year, putting on a performance so uninspiring that the final score flattered the hosts. The first half was a particularly ghastly effort, and while things certainly balanced out in the final 45, it wasn’t enough to salvage a result.
As El Tree now prepares to take on the Seattle Sounders in the season’s first road trip, there are several narrative threads to monitor after week one’s action (and no, they’re not all negative).
Injury Bug Back Again?
Austin FC had impeccable good fortune during its magical 2022 season from a health standpoint, though it’s felt like the club has been forced to pay for that good luck ever since.
The new campaign was supposed to put an injury-riddled 2023 in the rearview. Instead, Sebastián Driussi began the year out of the lineup with a hamstring injury, while top center back Leo Väisänen sustained a foot injury in the opener that had him on crutches by the end of the night.
The club can ill afford to be without either player for long. Getting Driussi – whose injury is not believed to be serious – back for the Seattle match would go a long way to reversing ATXFC’s season-opening misfortune.
Is Josh Wolff’s Message Still Resonating?
Nobody was more appalled at the first-half performance than Austin FC’s fourth-year head coach, Josh Wolff.
“It was unrecognizable from what our group has looked like in six, seven weeks of preseason, from speed [to] combativeness [to] dueling. So it was sorely lacking the things that we preached and had been about in preseason,” Wolff said.
Wolff and his staff might be preaching all the right things, but if the players aren’t picking up the sermon, it’s going to look the way it did against Minnesota.
To his credit, Wolff tore into his group in the halftime locker room and got a positive reaction in the second half. Time will tell which response is the norm and which is the anomaly.
New Faces Ready to Start?
All 11 players that began the match for Austin FC were with the club last year, as Wolff leaned on familiarity for the opener. However, the club had its best stretches of offense late in the match after newcomers Jáder Obrian and Diego Rubio subbed in for their Austin FC debuts.
Even outside back Guilherme Biro, who entered as the last substitute and otherwise did little of note, still made an impact in the dying moments of the game by scoring Austin FC’s only goal.
It will be fascinating to see if the performances of Obrian and Rubio, in particular, were enough to earn them opportunities to start as soon as this weekend in Seattle. Obrian’s speed and directness toward goal offers Austin FC an exciting element it hasn’t had in attack consistently since … well, ever, really.
Rubio’s preseason form, coupled with the fact that Gyasi Zardes struggled to impact the action during his 58 minutes on the pitch, makes the Chilean a decent bet to earn his first Austin FC start in week two.
Austin FC faces Seattle on Saturday, March 2, 9:30pm at Lumen Field.
This article appears in March 1 • 2024.
