The good news: Heading into Saturday’s match with LAFC, Austin FC’s still in the playoff picture. There was an elimination scenario on Wednesday, and Verde punted it out the window by winning 3-0 (and the other two teams who needed to get a result did not, so there’s also that).
The bad news: For starters, Verde needs to beat LAFC to have a shot at the playoffs, and with LAFC standout Denis Bouanga now leading the Golden Boot race — after a brace in a 5-1 win over the Loons to roll large boulders into their playoff path. The road to the playoffs for Austin is pretty narrow and specific.
But there’s a path there, even at this late stage, even after going winless in eight straight league matches at a time when better teams were clinching playoff spots. That would mean, of course, that should Austin qualify for the playoffs, they’d actually have to play in the playoffs, and that might just be — as Hobbes once famously said to describe the life of man and not an October 2023 Josh Wolff press conference — “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Here’s what we know right now.
