Getting Reacquainted with Austin FC, McConaughey's Disappointment

Ye Olde Tyme NFTs.

Thumbnail History
Austin FC came into MLS pretty hot, publicity-wise – look, Matthew McConaughey! He’s got a drum! – the fans showed up with drums of their own (and trumpets) and did “Keep Austin Weird” proud enough. The stadium looks great and there’s something charming about the way they bathe it in green light every time the home team scores (wait for it). The stage looks great, but…

Austin FC threw everyone a head-fake in 2022, when they finished second in the West and made a deep run in the MLS Cup playoffs (semifinals!). Their inaugural-season ringer, Sebastian Driussi, looked like a brilliant buy by their second season, his supporting cast of Maxi Urruti, Ethan Finlay and (particularly) Diego Fagundez combined with him in beautiful, four-part harmony, and the defense was…average, and goalkeeper Brad Stuver did everything he could to keep it that way (“Stuuuuvvv!”); Alex Ring directed traffic in midfield, Julio Cascante played better than he ever did as a Portland Timber: everything was clicking and the future looked bright. My memory's hazy on this - Austin's not a team I follow closely - but 2022 might have been the same season that pundits never stopped talking about how much Austin was over-performing their metrics. Even if that convo wasn't in 2022, having one super-freak of a season in what has otherwise been a short, barren history makes for a fitting way to wrap one's head around this team. Austin didn't make the playoffs in 2021 and they haven't made them after 2022, not even as a wild card. If you bought Austin FC stock after 2022, that would make you the proud owner of a bunch of tulip bulbs no one else wants. Looks like they have some time left on their stretch as an expansion team...

Total Joy Points: -1

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2022

Getting Reacquainted with Los Angeles FC, aka, the Spoiled Rich Kid that Transferred to Your Public School Under Somewhat Mysterious Circumstances

Still mid-orgasm. Started in 2021.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

With this post, this project arrives at the first team to play in MLS for less than a decade; Los Angeles FC has just six seasons behind them. It also gets to why, for all its shortcomings, the Joy Points Scale (methodology at the bottom of the post*) holds up all right. LAFC has enjoyed as much success as any team in the league over those six seasons. To do the math: they won one Supporters’ Shield, one MLS Cup, plus they made an unsuccessful trip to another Cup (the season just ended, in fact), and they made the playoffs in five seasons of six and, if memory serves, people and pundits read them as a bona fide contender for four of those playoff runs…

…also, what a bunch of assholes.

That’s good enough for them to rank eighth all-time on the janky little scale I concocted for this series – which gets to another truth about the American top-flight – i.e., that somewhere just shy of 20 teams have enjoyed either fleeting success or no success at all. LAFC, meanwhile, doesn’t have a history, not really, hence the temptation to roll Chivas USA into the mix and call it the history of LA's "other team." I dismissed that for the same reason I’m not counting the Miami Fusion as part of Inter Miami CF’s history. Just totally different animals in both cases.

Best Season(s)

A fucking no-brainer, obviously: they won the double in 2022 and capped off the Shield by winning what was arguably the best, wildest MLS Cup in league history (and pour one out for the Philadelphia Union for that loss). I’ve never experienced such a thing with any team I’ve followed in any sport, but imagine it feels like an orgasm after tantric sex.

Long-Term Tendencies

LAFC has a short, proud history of scoring tons of goals. Their 2019 team holds second-place for goals scored in a single season (at 72), but they’ve either been very over or very, very over the average for goals scored in, again, five of their six seasons. They even scored very over the average in the one season they missed the playoffs (2021), but even that’s a little weird given that they had a worse defensive record in MLS’s weirdest season, aka, 2020. Still, and not unlike the team as a whole, LAFC’s defenses have generally been good.

Sporting Kansas City 1-1 Austin FC: A Wee Scouting Report

Sure, use your disgusting hands...

Since I had time, and seeing that Sporting Kansas City is the Portland Timbers next opponent after the…international break, I watched SKC’s 1-1 home draw against Austin FC. I understand Austin doesn’t serve up an apples-to-apples comparison to Portland - also, have I mentioned how much it wads my undies when people talk about each game as if the home team plays the same team every week (because they don't)? - but I still wanted to see what I could see about how SKC approached the game, which players looked good, etc. Nothing deep, just some notes…

Sporting dominated the game, had most the possession, disrupted the hell out of Austin’s flow (except when they didn’t; wait for it), and so on, but Austin didn’t get a ton of great looks at Austin’s goal - and, when they did, the found Brad Stuver in the way (for example). He made nine saves (box score), some quite good, and I guess that’s my first note for Portland - or, more specifically, whoever starts in goal for them next Saturday: the 'keeper will have work to do. Whatever I thought of the approach (more later) and the general quality, SKC fired 32 shots, 11 of them on goal. They also showed a stress-inducing knack for holding the ball in the area once they got it in there (see note on Daniel Salloi below). That meant time in the area, and shots, but Austin cluttered the area pretty reliably. That’s what the note above on “great looks” points to: they defended with 7+ in the area and, from ~ the 40th minute on, Austin set the line of confrontation about 10 yards inside their own half.

With all that in front of them, SKC still forced home a goal - a smart put-back by Salloi, in fact - so they got something out of all that strum, drang, und running. Related thereto, Kansas City has given up the first goal in five of their nine games this season; they managed only the draw today, but, in four of those cases, they came back to win the game. That’s to say, don’t get cocky if/when The Former Wiz goes down a goal. Which brings me to a relevant digression…

I don’t think Portland will defend anywhere near as deep as Austin did - especially, not at home. I also don’t expect them to cede as much possession (they'll certainly hunt the ball more, or should), but I do expect the Timbers to take more chances in the attack: that’s all to say, I don’t expect Portland v SKC to either look or play-out like SKC v Austin. The latter plays a different style - Josh Wolff follows the Gregggg Berhalter dogma of playing out the back and likes to possess the ball, while I’d call Portland more opportunistic and creative. Which brings up the next point…

DC United 0-0 Sporting Kansas City: Professionals, Grimly at Work

5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock...

[This ties in with something I plan to post either tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how god’s willing, and in which way. He’s cagey…]

DC United versus Sporting Kansas City, a game that knotted in fairly dreary zeroes, was on the TV the entire time I was in the same room, or a room adjacent thereto. I’m solid from about the 30th minute on, but I was preparing what turned out to be a pretty disappointing pot roast up to that point. So, that’s the disclosure portion out of the way…

Both DC and KC field solid professionals – aka, players who don’t fuck up a lot – so disciplined performances all ‘round, both Saturday and generally. Not a lot of daylight to be had between them, then, and this game felt pretty goddamn technical as a result, but for all the wrong reasons.

The name didn’t so much lack for highlights – KC’s ‘keeper, Tim Melia, saved both the shot and a rebound on a penalty kick, fer crissakes – as the ones it provided delivered on the defensive side. To hit this game solely from DC’s perspective, they handled just about everything KC could throw at them, up to and including an imbalance in possession, but a larger distinction showed up on the attacking side, where DC looked just…slower than Kansas City. I mean this last point in a “running in mud” kind of way: every KC player appeared able to run down any DC attacker in three or five strides.