The Verde Report: From Top-of-League Perch, Austin FC Looks Like Title Contenders
Plus, Sebastián Driussi becomes the first Verde player to be named to MLS All-Star Team
By Eric Goodman, Fri., July 15, 2022
For the first time in club history, Austin FC has an MLS All-Star in Sebastián Driussi. ¡Felicidades! Well deserved. Problem is, the Verde and Black should have multiple representatives on the All-Star squad come August. And they know it.
"We're sitting at the top right right now and I think we should for sure have more than one player," Julio Cascante said. He, Ruben Gabrielsen, Diego Fagúndez, Alex Ring, and Brad Stuver all have compelling cases as All-Star snubs.
Because here's a simple fact of life as we sit in July 2022: Austin FC is a really good team. Excellent? Yeah. Dominant? Often. Beatable? Not lately. On Tuesday the club conceded an early goal to the visiting Houston Dynamo and, like a pissed-off hornet, stung back three times to win its fourth straight match and ascend to the top of the league table.
Conjure up your ideal recipe for a title-contending soccer team. What ingredients did you pick? Potent, attractive attack? Reliable defense and goalkeeping? Solid veteran leadership? Innovative hotshot head coach? MVP candidate pulling the strings?
Welcome to Verde. It's all right there.
There are only so many ways to win a soccer match, and the Oaks have covered most of them through 20 games. They wasted no time crossing off "merciless, unmitigated beatdown" with the first two matches of the season, then circled back to it last week in Atlanta in case any ink had started to fade. "Gritty, grind-it-out nailbiter"? How about a pair of 1-0 road wins last month in Montréal and Charlotte, the former coming despite an early red card. "Improbable comeback"? July 4: turning 0-2 into 3-2 in Colorado City. "Big win over fellow contender"? May 18: 2-1 over former league leaders LAFC. These Oaks have hit for the cycle, and done so with over 40% of the regular season still to come.
The scary part is that Austin FC is doing all of this shorthanded. Cecilio Domínguez, one of just three permitted top-dollar players, isn't playing, and there are no signs suggesting he will again this season, at least for Austin. The club's starting right wing has become a platoon between 31-year-old Ethan Finlay and 17-year-old Owen Wolff and yet, somehow, it's worked. And then there's the part that will make Verde fans' mouths water: The cavalry is still on the way.
The midseason transfer window is here, and Austin FC has already reeled in its first fish: twitchy winger Washington Corozo, eager to prove his mettle and earn a World Cup trip with Ecuador by impressing stateside. Coach Josh Wolff has all but confirmed the club will add fullback depth, now more urgent than ever after Hector Jimenez left Tuesday's match on a stretcher (groin injury, Wolff posited). There are even multiple reports of an impending Designated Player-signing centered around Argentine winger Emiliano Rigoni, which would provide a huge lift for the club and also likely necessitate Domínguez leaving Austin FC in an official capacity.
The fact that Austin FC is in the position it's in – atop the table in mid-July and pushing to get stronger – is a credit, first and foremost, to its second-year head coach. "Josh deserved a lot more love last year. I know that he took a lot of criticism and a lot of heat for the results that we were taking last year, but he really was building something from the ground up," Stuver said.
"So a lot of credit goes to Josh and a lot of credit goes to the coaching staff here for building the identity of this club last year, taking the criticism and sticking true to what they believed, bringing in the players that they needed to, and for all of us to buy in again this year and just bring it to life."
