The great reset: Austin FC embarks on its 2026 U.S. Open Cup journey in Louisville

The 2025 U.S. Open Cup gave Austin FC some of its best and worst moments in the club's history.

Consider, for instance, the joy radiating from head coach Nico Estévez following Verde's 2-1 semifinal win over Minnesota on Sept. 17, when CJ Fodrey's very late goal sent them to the final.

But also, consider the heartbreak of the Open Cup final two weeks later, when Nashville beat Austin by the same scoreline, in a game with plenty of almost and not enough alright alright alright.

And then, though this is the tournament that gave us the grind-it-out penalty sequence win over San Jose, it also gave us the sickening sight of a downed Brandon Vázquez in the midst of that match, and all Austin fans' worst fears of an ACL injury (that he's yet to come back from) confirmed days after their team advanced.

Don't forget that 2025's opening round, against USL Championship side El Paso, gave us an incredible three-goals-in-eight-minutes sequence that allowed Verde to escape defeat and catapult into three more wins to reach the final.

But it also gave us being down 2-0 to a USL team 72 minutes into a match, with the very real prospect of being ousted by a second-division team in the first round for the second time in four years, and it gave us the spectacle of Austin fans booing players off the field at halftime.

It's a complicated tournament for Verde. And it starts again tonight at 6 pm CT in Louisville, with Estévez, following Saturday's 2-1 loss to the Galaxy to send his team to a 1W 3L 3D record, declaring it a chance to "reset" – and to quest for a winnable trophy.

How to watch

Remember that this is an early 6 pm CT start time, rather than the customary East Coast 6:30 pm for MLS games. Also, since it's Open Cup and not the MLS regular season, you'll turn to Paramount+ to stream the bulk of Open Cup matches, though CBS Sports Network has Louisville-Austin as part of a doubleheader, paired with Colorado Rapids facing Union Omaha in the 8:30 pm CT slot.

What happens if Austin FC wins

Thinking positive, should Austin FC get past Louisville, it will face the winner of the Houston Dynamo-El Paso Locomotive match on April 28 or 29. Should the Dynamo win, the rivals would face off in Houston; should the Locos score the upset, they'd return to Q2 Stadium for the second straight season.

And then, looking further into the future, it would look like this:

Quarterfinals: May 19 or 20

Verde would play one of Chicago Fire, St. Louis City SC, FC Tulsa, or Detroit City FC.

Semifinals: Sept. 15 or 16

Possible opponents include Sporting Kansas City, Colorado Rapids, Minnesota United FC, San Jose Earthquakes, or if there's Cupset magic afoot, Colorado Springs Switchbacks, Union Omaha, Sacramento Republic, or Phoenix Rising.

The final: Oct. 21

The Eastern half of the bracket includes eight MLS teams: Orlando City (which would put Antoine Griezmann in a Cup final!), New England Revolution, Columbus Crew, DC United, New York City FC, Red Bull New York, Atlanta United, or Charlotte FC. If you're upset-minded, you have FC Naples, Rhode Island FC, Richmond Kickers, One Knoxville SC, Westchester SC, Pittsburgh Riverhounds, Chattanooga FC, or Charlotte Independence to choose from.

The Damian Las factor

Two players have played for both teams in Tuesday's matchup. Manny Perez, who now features as a right back for Louisville City, was part of Verde's inaugural squad, logging 374 minutes with Verde in 2021 (10 appearances, four starts) as a midfielder and even a striker.

But you're likely more familiar with Damian Las, who was loaned to Louisville in 2024 and 2025 following his stellar 2023 with Austin FC II, winning MLS Next Pro Cup and getting to participate in the All-Star Game's Goalie Wars. Las is now developing with Austin's first team as Brad Stuver's backup; typically, No. 2 goalkeepers get cup competition minutes, and Las' coy "We'll see" about playing while grinning, to our Moisés Chiullán at Sunday's Austin FC II match against Houston Dynamo 2, gives me additional confidence that Las will get the start on Tuesday — playing against players he knows.

Coaching change

Louisville's USL success owed in part to head coach Danny Cruz, the club's longest-tenured and winningest skipper, who moved to Minnesota United's coaching staff last month, leaving assistant Simon Bird to assume the interim head coach mantle.

USL's Nicholas Murray wrote, in a tribute article following the announcement,

Among managers to have coached at least 50 regular season games, Cruz has averaged two points per game across 165 contests, a remarkable level of consistency. He sits second to only former Orlando City SC head coach [and former Austin Aztex head coach] Adrian Heath in that category, with the Lions accumulating 2.2 points per game in a league that between 2011 and 2014 looked very different from the landscape the league features today.

If there’s a knock on Cruz, it’s that he wasn’t able to lead LouCity to its third title, something both his predecessors accomplished. Still, the silverware has still rolled into Lynn Family Stadium. In 2024, Cruz led the side to its first Players’ Shield, setting single-season records with 16 home wins and 58 home goals in the campaign. A year ago, the side went back-to-back, posting the highest points-per-game mark (2.43) in league history while becoming only the fourth team to go through a regular season with only one defeat.

That level of consistency has made Cruz a record-setter in his own right. Last September he became both the youngest manager in USL Championship history to reach 100 wins, doing so aged 35 years, 8 months, 17 days old, and the fastest to reach the mark in just 169 games across the regular season and playoffs.

In other words, he'll be missed.

Trevor's scouting report

Austin FC fan extraordinaire Trevor Allison also happens to be Austin's resident Louisville City expert, having grown up on the Indiana side of the Ohio River near Louisville and following their exploits from the time they entered the league – for the 2015 season, taking over Orlando City's USL spot when that team (at one time the Austin Aztex) entered MLS.

He was kind enough to provide us a scouting report, as he's watching far more Louisville City than I have. I did enough research to learn that, so far this season, Louisville is tied with El Paso for most goals in USL-C with 14, so even though they're not entirely what they were under Cruz, they're still formidable in the league just below MLS.

Cruz left to be an assistant at Minnesota, but the interim coach Simon Bird was with Cruz for several years and plays basically the same 3-4-3 high pressing system. They will often set up in a mid block but come forward to press any time a ball moves backward or sideways. The wingbacks are a big part of the press and are the height and width going forward, so it almost could be called a 3-2-5 in possession AND in defense. The striker doesn’t score a ton in the system, as his main role is to take up space with a CB or two and let the chaos of the press and skilled players take advantage of a scrambled backline, which happens regularly in league play.

They used the press and positioning to control games without controlling possession. Their average height of defensive actions (via the USL Stat account on Bluesky is about 45 yards, or almost to the defensive side of the center circle, while the pass maps often look pretty disjointed and lopsided, as they look to move forward quickly when the press knocks the opponent off balance. I assume they will try to play this way against Austin, as they aren’t really built to do anything else, and they fancy themselves legitimate competition for any MLS club.

Since the start of 2024, they’ve only lost five competitive matches at home. Two were in the playoffs and one was to Minnesota United in the Open Cup last year. But the most recent was only two weeks ago to Charleston Battery, albeit with a couple of strange goals allowed.

Austin will certainly be the more talented team with better athletes, but Lou City has a coherent style they’ve used effectively for years, and will have a pretty loud crowd (even if it’s not full), as they’ve been pitching the match as “Lou City vs MLS” and the Soccer Warz can always get the people going. I think Austin wins a match that’s not always comfortable for Verde fans, but Estévez’s general defensive solidity should be enough to stymie the Lou City attack.

Trevor's players to watch

Yes, there's more; Trevor is a treasure trove of Louisville City knowledge.

Taylor Davila, midfielder

He's the 2025 USL Player of the Year, from LA Galaxy's academy. He’s the guy that makes it all work. He’s a 10/8 who is a level above the rest of the league on the ball. It’s impossible to get the ball off of him and he can hit good key passes or the pass before the pass with regularity. He’s also pretty good on free kicks and will shoot with accuracy when given space. He's basically the Zidane of USL — his soccer skills would translate to MLS but he would have trouble keeping up physically.

Jansen Wilson and Rey Serrano, midfielders/wingers

They're both pocket wingers and half-space merchants. Wilson (who played college soccer at Kentucky) is a fast, aggressive player who will take long shots any time there is space and puts a lot of them on frame. Serrano (from the Sounders academy) is probably the most technically skilled player on the roster, can beat anyone 1 v. 1 on the inside and can finish in a lot of different ways.

Sean Totsch, center back

He's the all-time appearance leader for Lou City. A rock solid veteran CB who plays with a tucked-in shirt and takes Lou City’s PKs. Not scared of anyone and obviously a fan favorite.

The fullbacks

They have four starting caliber fullbacks who interchange all the time. Our old friend Manny Perez and Atlanta United Academy player Aiden McFadden play on the right side. USL/MLS vet Amadou Dia and Jake Morris (Aidan’s brother) play on the left. They all play high, hit crosses and crash the back post. It feels like at least one fullback scores every week.

Hugo Faroux, goalkeeper

He's a French USL vet who played a few matches for the Bold in 2021. He’s been decent so far, but definitely a downgrade from Las. His last two matches have been his worst so far, and he does not do well in scramble situations but is good enough in shot stopping and set pieces. This is probably an area Austin can exploit.

So, what if Austin loses?

There's a non-zero chance that a motivated USL-C team on the road can catch out Austin in what we're expecting to be Las' first start. That would make for a winless streak extending to six, but adding a second-division team to the mix of teams Verde can't beat, and we may see the grousing about Estévez from pockets of the fan base grow.

One MLS coach, Marco Donadel, was dismissed from Miami after starting as its interim head coach 13 months prior, having started the season (with an imperfect roster) 1W 6L 0D. That's clearly a worse record than Austin's, and Estévez has racked up quality draws to avoid as much of the loss column as the former Impact experienced, but those losses have come to the 4th and 10th-best teams in the West and the 5th-best team in the East.

It's unlikely we would see a coaching change before the World Cup break, but there is one and there's a mini-preseason that would allow for a new manager to come in and impose a style. Former MLS coaches like Wilfried Nancy and Jim Curtin are currently without teams — for Nancy, the result of a tumultuous five weeks at Celtic – and Vanni Sartini could likely be pried from HFX Wanderers to return to MLS. While a coaching change isn't currently in the works — as far as we know — Estévez's future with Austin could hinge on how well his team does in the World Cup, as well as how quickly he can take the league record out of its nosedive.

Being currently at six points after seven matches, with an 0.86 points per game lower than any Verde team over a full season, the team has to play at a 1,44 PPG pace just to get to 45 points, the usual (but not always) demarcation point for making the playoffs. Each loss makes the grade of that mountain steeper; put two losses in there, and the drive for 45 is contingent on playing at 1.56 PPG, which roughly works out to two wins, two draws, and a loss in every five-game block going forward.

The Open Cup at least gives fans some respite from thinking about the climb to come in league play — but only as long as Austin keeps winning.

Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. For more coverage, check out Emergency Podcast! (an Austin FC Podcast) wherever you get your podcasts.