WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: STLCSC
Welcome back to What You Need To Know, a match preview for Austin FC fans to check in on their next opponent.
Austin FC midfielder Facundo Torres. Photo courtesy of Chris Rodriguez (RDZ Flickz)
Opponent: St Louis CITY
Kick Off time: 1:54 PM US Central Time
Location: Energizer Park, St Louis, Missouri
History vs. Austin FC:
Austin FC is 2-1-4 all-time and is 1-0-2 against St Louis away. Austin defeated St Louis 2-0 earlier this month at Q2 thanks to goals from Christian Ramirez and Myrto Uzuni.
Recent Matches:
St Louis is undefeated in their past three MLS matches since losing at Austin FC, including wins over the Colorado Rapids and LAFC. They defeated the Houston Dynamo in the USOC Quarter Finals on Tuesday, 4-2 on penalty kicks. St Louis currently sits 14th in the Western Conference.
Players to Watch:
Please see the post earlier this month
Keys to the Match:
#NicoDut
This past week, Austin FC announced the firings of Sporting Director Rodolfo Borrell and Head Coach Nico Estevez. As someone who advocated the coaching side of this move weeks ago, I’m happy to see Austin FC move on from a coach that the players had already tuned out. Nico’s plan to essentially forfeit last Wednesday’s game (based on his post-game press conference), which turned into an embarrassing road loss, and then also lose against one of the worst teams in the league at home was clearly the last straw in a string of embarrassing losses and bad results dating back to last season.
Nico Esetevez was a mistake from the start, a coach who got fired mid-season by a team worse than Austin that same season, and that simple fact should have disqualified him from any short list Borrell put together. His teams did worse the longer he was the coach, and Austin managed to speed run to results three years in the future. In what was quickly turning into a lost season featuring bad vibes with anything even tangentially touching the club, this has given the fan base a new lease on life, and with 20 games left (including this one), there’s still time for Austin to make it into the playoffs in what is a fairly open (and down) Western Conference.
#RodoDut
The more surprising part of the move was Borrell’s firing. Rodo came to Austin FC after a stint with Manchester City and had experience coaching in “La Masia” at FC Barcelona. We were regaled with stories of his vast contacts in Europe and how he was an MLS sicko, staying up late to watch matches on weekends.
Unfortunately for us, his best moves were selling off unwanted or want-away players (Johan Romana, Sebastian Driussi), and the players he brought in underperformed or were overpriced for their production. He also failed to utilize all the many pathways MLS teams are able to use to find value for their rosters and seemed openly hostile to utilizing the second team. It doesn’t help that the team’s record with him in charge is worse than before he took over:
Pre Borrell 34-16-41 (90) 37% - 1 playoff appearance
Post Borrell 30-26-37 (93) 32% - 1 playoff appearance
For someone who talked a huge game and brashly and brazenly treated the media, players, and agents, these results aren’t good enough to stay in your job. It leaves Austin FC with a power vacuum (again) and with a two-month break. Hopefully, this goes better than the last time a Sporting Director was fired unexpectedly.
Putting together the puzzle
Interim Head Coach Davy Arnaud, and whoever the next coach is will have a lot of interesting lineup questions to answer for Austin FC. The team now has three strikers, with Brandon Vazquez getting more field time, and it’s unclear which mix of them plays best together. Christian Ramirez and Myrto Uzuni have partnered well, but against Kansas City looked like it was their first time on the field together. Vazquez missed an open header in the box off a corner that may be the ultimate “what could have been” moment in Austin FC history. Uzuni was back to his old habit of trying to score himself rather than doing what would help the team score.
Next up is how to maximize Facundo Torres, Owen Wolff, and Jayden Nelson, three players who are used mostly as wingers or advanced attackers, who all play differently and have not been on the field together as a trio. We saw Torres deployed as a right-sided attacking mid with Owen on the left in a similar role, but they were unable to influence the game or link up in any meaningful way with each other or their teammates. There is attacking talent on this roster, but it needs to be put into a system to maximize it so it can work together and be at least the sum of its parts.
Prediction:
Austin FC: 1
St Louis CITY: 2
WRITTEN BY SCOTT SPECHT
