Look at an Austin FC stats table for the 2026 season, and you'll see two names atop the goal leader list: Myrto Uzuni, with four, and Christian Ramírez, with three. Uzuni's perhaps not a surprise on this list, given that he was slotted in as the starting No. 9 until Brandon Vázquez's return reignited the question — now before us in the coming next few matches — of how does one play them together?
Ramírez, however, wasn't even a member of the team until Feb. 27, when LA Galaxy's roster management (or mismanagement, you might argue) allowed him to be available on waivers, with sporting director Rodolfo Borrell using an 11th-hour bid worthy of successful eBay buyers to not only pick him up, but to do so on the maximum salary level allowing him to be a supplemental roster player (as opposed to a senior roster player).
Having Uzuni and Ramírez contribute nearly half of Verde's goals to date is a primary reason that they're staying in the playoff places about a third of the way through the season. If you extrapolate their goals to a full season assuming the same production — complicated by Vázquez's integration into the team, but hopefully to Verde's benefit — Uzuni would finish the season with 12 goals, getting into Respectable for a Designated Player territory, while Ramírez's nine would be a nice surprise given he wasn't even on the team when it played its season opener.
But how much has each player improved individually from last year? Data providers are making it harder to showcase this with the radar charts we'd prefer ... but we do have some visuals, as well as some per-90 data, to guide us.
First, let's consider Ramírez.
The other Superman
One of the immediate narratives that emerged when Ramírez arrived was that Austin FC now had two forwards nicknamed Superman. He was asked about that in the first press conference in which Austin media got to field questions, and he answered it (propping up Vázquez) with aplomb:
