World Cup Break Kicks Off Uncertain Austin FC Future

You’d be hard-pressed to sum up the current state of Austin FC any better than striker Brandon Vázquez did following the club’s latest demoralizing loss – a 3-0 beatdown away versus St. Louis City over the weekend.

“We’re in a shitty moment, and that’s the reality.”

Considering the reality includes a 14th-place position (out of 15) in the Western Conference standings, a wretched -12 goal difference through 15 games, and vacancies at both the head coach and sporting director positions, “shitty” might actually be an understatement. Things are as bad as they’ve ever been for this club in its short but fraught history.

So where does this Austin FC team go from here?

Well, for starters, they go on vacation. With the possible exception of winger Jayden Nelson, who was named to Canada’s 30-player preliminary World Cup training camp and has a chance to make the 26-man roster, the rest of the ATX players get to enjoy three weeks of league-mandated time off, followed by a multi-week, preseason-style training camp to ramp back up to action. Perhaps a mental reset is just what the doctor ordered, though goalkeeper and team leader Brad Stuver cautioned against leaning too heavily into the “fresh start” mindset.

“We have to learn from what we did this first half of the season, and I think we need to take away some of the pain that we’ve had,” Stuver said. “I don’t want us to kind of turn the page and say it’s a fresh start because … we have to live with what we’ve done in the first half of the season.”

While the players skip town, Austin FC brass has quite a bit of work to do. Club ownership has hired the services of agency and consulting firm Excel Sports Management to lead the search for a new sporting director to fill the post formerly occupied by Rodolfo Borrell. Excel’s track record within MLS is far from confidence-inspiring (see: FC Cincinnati 1.0 and San Jose Earthquakes), but, really, this search shouldn’t be complicated. The club took a big swing on an outside-the-box hire with Borrell and whiffed. There are more than enough capable soccer executives within MLS already – either as former front office No. 1’s or current No. 2’s – to pick from.

Or, perhaps Austin FC gets hold of the kind of soccer mind worthy of combining both the sporting director and head coach positions, as other MLS clubs have periodically done. (As floated in last week’s column, former Philadelphia Union coach Jim Curtin and ex-Columbus Crew coach Wilfried Nancy would both seemingly qualify for that distinction, should they want the expanded authority.)

Whichever route the search takes, the sooner it leads to a hire, the better. With the summer break comes a crucial midseason transfer window, and Austin FC already knows full well the risks of going into negotiations without a front office leader in place. Following Claudio Reyna’s sudden exit in the winter of 2023, the remains of the club’s front office stumbled its way into multiple bad contracts that Borrell spent three years getting the club out of.

Perhaps those efforts will become Borrell’s parting gift to Austin FC. While results under his watch were certainly lackluster, and his Designated Player signings have been largely underwhelming, he undoubtedly left the club’s salary cap situation in better shape than he found it. Perhaps Borrell should expect a thank-you note from his eventual replacement.

There’s no doubt that Austin FC is headed for a full-scale rebuild, which will test the patience of an already jaded fanbase. But as anyone who’s ever renovated a home can attest, you have to get through the demolition phase before you can start seeing improvement.

For more Austin FC news and analysis, visit The Austin Chronicle’s Austin FC hub. Sign up for The Verde Report newsletter to get the latest news delivered straight to your inbox, and follow The Verde Report columnist Eric Goodman on X: @goodman.

The post World Cup Break Kicks Off Uncertain Austin FC Future appeared first on The Austin Chronicle.