Just four short months ago, Los Angeles Football Club pulled up to Q2 Stadium, scored four goals, and ended Austin FC’s season in embarrassing fashion in the first round of the MLS Cup Playoffs. Saturday night, the Verde and Black got their chance to exact a sliver of revenge.
And while a win proved to be too much for the banged-up ATX squad to manage, a goalless draw in which Austin was decisively the better team still counted for a lot in the Verde locker room.
“The big thing was for us to show personality. I think we did that,” center back Brendan Hines-Ike said. “That’s got to be the standard going forward.”
Hines-Ike, together with the entire ATX defense, was excellent in denying LAFC’s star-studded attack clean looks on goal, blocking shots, and making well-timed tackles whenever Son Heung-Min or Denis Bouanga looked to shoot. Goalkeeper Brad Stuver was required to save an LAFC shot just once in order to preserve the clean sheet.
“It was the defense’s night tonight. They put up some crazy numbers,” Stuver said. “[Hines-Ike] was Man of the Match for me. That was one of the best games I’ve ever seen him play.”
At the other end of the pitch, up against an LAFC squad that had not conceded a single goal across its first four MLS games, head coach Nico Estévez deployed a new attacking formation designed to get his top guns more touches with the ball.
For the first time this season, Austin rolled out two strikers up top, with Christian Ramirez partnering alongside Myrto Uzuni. Ramirez played the more traditional center forward role, while Uzuni operated as more of a “false 9,” free to drift into pockets of space between LAFC’s lines. The result was, by far, Uzuni’s most impactful game of the season.
The Albanian international was active both on offense and tracking back defensively when needed. And he was brutally unlucky not to get credit for what would have been his second goal of the season and a potential winning goal for Austin FC.
In the 63rd minute, ATX once again proved deadly off a set piece when Facundo Torres directed a corner kick to the top of the 18-yard box. There, just as the play was drawn up on the training ground, Uzuni rushed in to attack the cross with a low driven volley that fizzed through a crowd of players and into the goal. Unfortunately, the last member of that crowd of players, Ilie Sánchez, was ruled by the VAR to have been in an offside position when the ball passed through his legs en route to the back of the net. As referee Rubiel Vazquez ultimately judged, Sánchez’s presence sufficiently affected the sight line of LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, so Uzuni’s goal was chalked off.
Once again, the Verde and Black struggled to create chances from open play, and ended the evening with just two shots on goal to LAFC’s one. But possession, control, and overall effort certainly reflected positively on the home side.
“Every individual gave everything. And this should be the standard of how we have to perform,” Estévez said. “And from there, I believe we have a good roster, a good team, and it’s improved certain things, and I think we are going to be really good this year.”
The club now sets its sights on another star-laden lineup in the form of Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami in a road clash set for April 4, following a week off due to a FIFA international break.
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