Fairly decent team, frustrated fans: Your Austin FC end-of-season survey results, Part Two

In Part One of the Austin FC end-of-season survey results, which we shared Saturday, we focused on pie charts showing overall acknowledgment, if not satisfaction or contentment, with how the 2025 season went.

But we also hinted at significant fan frustration, which we'll dig into further here with representative comments from the nearly 200 people who responded to the survey. Not everyone submitted comments, but enough of you did that I have plenty to share ... so thank you to all who took the extra step.

First, though, one more pie chart, and this is a crucial one, as it sets us up for the 2026 season.

How confident are you in Austin FC in 2026?

The vast majority of fans went with either three or four stars, with three eking out a bare majority, with only one in eight being extremely positive or negative. Yet only 2.1% put Verde in the five-star MLS Cup contender category, and that's not surprising given where the team is relative to others in the league.

And that brings us to the frustration, which we'll group into two main areas: With the team, and with the matchday experience.

Frustration with the team

You'll notice some thematic arcs here.

This team is like all the teams that are 5th-9th. There’s nothing remarkable about it. We have some solid players. We’ve had more okay performances than anything else. Needless to say, this is not enough to win anything. I think we lack a true CAM to unlock the offense assuming BV9 is back fully next season. Drop Uzuni, get Driussi (or someone at that level) back.

I've been eager for Austin FC sporting director Rodolfo Borrell to look for a functional No. 10 (or CAM, acronym for a central attacking midfielder) for quite some time, so much so that I latched on to the Kervin Andrade rumors when they were active, even though he would have been a very green U22 stringpuller.

And I do believe the only way a CAM of significance gets to the team is if Myrto Uzuni finds a new home in the offseason, but I don't see that as particularly likely. It could happen. It probably needs to happen for the team to appreciably improve, unless Uzuni has a transformative offseason. But offload Uzuni, and you roll with CJ Fodrey as your starting striker — and perhaps he's ready for this – until Brandon Vázquez returns from his knee injury, as this respondent refers to. (And we don't know which Vázquez we're going to get in, let's say, April, to be safe.)

Why can’t we score more goals? Why are our DPs not scoring more often? No one feels dangerous when striking. Buka feels dangerous looking for the cross or pass, but no one else comes close to the feeling of Driussi inside the box.

There's another person pining for Sebastián Driussi, who is not coming back. And regarding this danger idea, Osman Bukari certainly had that for portions of the season, and he looked to finally be connecting with Vázquez a bit before the injury. But the "I see everything" moment that Uzuni and Bukari had at St. Louis early in the season – in which Uzuni made a public case for feeding him the ball more — was more indicative of a lack of cohesion than a team witnessing an ascendant star.

I just want us to be good and fun. I want a team that doesn’t hate each other or the coach. Like I want the team to play fun soccer and not so pessimistic as it has been at times this year. I don’t know if Nico is the one to do fun attacking soccer, but he has the team not hating each other. It is such a great home atmosphere when it is poppin’; just bring back fun, Rodo and Nico. 

I also want Austin FC to be good and fun. This team was that at points this year; it just wasn't at the consistent levels of LAFC or Vancouver (who played a remarkable playoff match last night in which I went full fan, realizing that exists deep below my flinty journalistic exterior).

Decent first season for Nico results-wise, but this team is boring as hell. I attended about half the home regular-season games this year, and witnessed two wins and maybe six or seven Austin FC goals. That sucks (though that’s partially on me picking the wrong ones to attend). My overall interest in the team has cooled significantly over the past three seasons. given the lack of results under Wolff and the boring but sometimes effective results under Nico. Outside of 2022 Driussi, the DPs have been underwhelming, and they gotta hit on one of those again soon.

Yes, the idea of hitting on your designated players, which anchored my article exploring how much goals cost teams in salary. Goal production was better in the second half of the season, but was quite worrisome in the first half. And I think this is feeding some of the discontent over matchdays, as goals do change fan perception of games as well as the games themselves. (And, no, Driussi's not coming back, though those 2022 home games were, overall, extremely fun.)

There have been moments I thought we could win everything, and moments I thought we were absolute trash. But the end of season puts things in perspective — we had highs and lows that balanced out to a middle-of-the-road 6th seed. I’ll forget this as soon as we have our first loss in 2026.

Ah, perspective! Let's take these next two together.

This season has been okay but not great. It feels like the team isn’t fully aligned — at times, you can sense individual egos getting in the way of chemistry on the field. To make Austin FC successful on and off the field in the years ahead, we need stronger cohesion, leadership, and a more exciting style of play.

Many season ticket holders I know chose not to renew for 2026, which shows the need to re-energize the fan base with better soccer and a clearer vision. Austin also needs a true international star — someone who can elevate the team’s performance and energize the entire franchise, like what Miami, LA, and Vancouver have done.

This first one seems targeted at Uzuni, and this second one seems targeted as something I talked about at the end of the Part One article. This summer, Miami bolstered its lineup with Rodrigo de Paul, LAFC got Son Heung-min, and Vancouver — with an annual roster spend comparable to Austin — brought Thomas Müller over.

In Vancouver's case, it was enabled by dealing a U22 player to Pumas, Pedro Vite, who grew in value during his time with the Whitecaps. LAFC and Miami have the resources and the bask-in-an-awesome-city factor that convinces players to come up for less than other cities might have to negotiate. Which brings us to this comment.

Fan expectations are sometimes too high, as someone not native to Austin I think it's odd when Austin people think of Austin as a comparable destination to cities like LA, New York and Miami, and expect incoming players to want to play here over bigger cities [that] attract guys like Son in. That's just not how Austin will see success imo. We are a “build the academy and bring in good players” team, not a “bring in new superstars every few years to compete” team.

That would be true if the academy were consistently producing MLS-level players, but it's just not doing that yet. Ervin Torres could be that, but he just turned 18 on Nov. 14, and he's not quite on the level where 18-year-old Owen Wolff was. (And Wolff, though technically an academy player, bounced from Columbus to Atlanta before arriving at Austin with his dad.)

Micah Burton, who came over from Minnesota's academy when it was put on pause to anchor the initial group of academy players, hasn't quite developed as hoped — he's yet to make a senior team appearance at age 19, and could be headed toward a life in USL on his current trajectory. I hope he makes the leap to MLS level, but I'm less optimistic about this than I was when he arrived.

Frustration with the matchday experience

Let's start this section with an understanding: Austin FC has an incredible matchday experience. Having been inside close to half of MLS' stadia, I can confidently say that the combination of fan energy, concessions, and architecture makes Q2 Stadium arguably unbeatable. But that doesn't mean you're all collectively satisfied with being better than others.

Sad to say it, but after five years and a true day-one Austin supporter, I've been priced out of my season tickets. In my opinion, the on-field success does not match the annual increase in cost of tickets and it's disappointing to see multiple people in my section make the same choice. I understand it's a business, but pricing out loyal fans is a bad look in my book. I know we've had pretty solid renewal rates year-over-year, but I'm curious if we'll see more of a hit after five years — not to mention the fact that no one cares about the "sellout streak" and I'd say I'm actually bothered by it when that 20,378 number pops up and there are hundreds of empty seats around and people are priced out.

Ticket prices have been a sore subject for a while, and the front office has made its case about this before. But to me, this begins to get at the perception of value — an idea of "What am I paying for?" intrinsically tied to "How much fun am I having?"

Q2 concessions feel like they're falling off big time. I also am constantly frustrated with the hustle of trying to get match day posters; surely there are better ways to do this.

Ticket pricing is concerning — only keeps going up while the product on the field has not been improving. Food at the stadium seems to be getting worse in an effort to extract every last dollar out of the fans. Fan goodwill is gone, and it shows in attendance slowly dwindling.

I'd love to know more about why people perceive that food quality is "falling off big time;" for the last few years, Austin FC's showcased its food offerings in an impressive media event, and getting La Barbecue in the stadium's barbecue corner allowed the front office to boast of having Michelin Star-awarded concessions.

I'm guessing it ties into the idea of value. You can still get winning sandwiches, burgers, and choripans for $16 to $24, and we've joked for years about an Electric Jellyfish approaching $20. But that adds up quickly, and if you're eating that while Verde's failing to score goals, does that somehow make it less appetizing?

Also, one commenter decried "corporate catering bullshit" replacing local businesses, which sounds like someone sad that Taco Flats is no longer in the stadium. I too lament Taco Flats' exit, though OneTaco and Little Patagonia now occupy that spot in the Austin Telco Terrace line of offerings. Plenty of local still exists.

Can someone please turn down the volume a little bit on the stadium announcements and DJ music? My watch regularly warns of >90db and my ears are ringing after games. People in my section (235) are wearing earplugs, and it isn't because of La Murga or cheering. It's the artificial stuff. Stop it! Lastly, I love La Murga, but they don't leave any room for organic, easy-to-memorize chants to happen, and that locks people out of participation. Austin FC's home field advantage is negligible. Shouldn't it be better than that?

We need Stevie Ray Vaughan or similar Austin/Texas musicians played after every win, not Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right.” Keep it cool, keep it Austin.

The front office has focused more on matchday experience in 2025, and I love that Speedbump-as-Godzilla has become my cue to stop any halftime wandering/vibes-checking I do around the concourse to get back up to the press box. But these comments indicate not everyone's happy with everything. And I'm happy I'm not the only one puzzling over the Beastie Boys played after wins. I love the Beastie Boys. But they're New York through and through.

It doesn't have to be "Whiskey River," as Matthew McConaughey suggested in Verde's infancy, but it should be something that's more Austin. Thank you for attending my TED talk.

And, finally, La Murga catches some strays.

La Murga has become a weird, rigid, self-aggrandizing piece of 90 minute performance art. Tifos aside, the South End just plays the same old setlist, not reacting to the game with a relevant song or getting creative with chants for players. How we don't have a Teen Wolff ditty or a ballad to sing at Stuver is beyond me. It's a real bummer.

Could La Murga be better at adapting its set list for player-centric songs and following the flow of the game? It's an interesting question that I now want to explore in the offseason, on the other side of talking about the roster decisions that have to come by Wednesday.

Again, go to a match in Frisco or Kansas City or Commerce City and contrast it with what you have in Austin, and you'll instantly perceive the distance. Even Houston, which does have fans creating music going the full 90, feels more same-set-list than Austin.

But this is perhaps where Austin fandom is reaching a growing pains inflection point. Five years in, and the team has a pair of Copa Tejas trophies, a home U.S. Open Cup final, and two playoff victories en route to a Western Conference final played away to its credit.

The frustration of wanting more, from how I'm reading all of this, is leading to discontent with even the best aspects of the Austin matchday experience. Go far back enough in Austin FC history, before there even was a team, and we've gone from a disconnected group of soccer fans who never thought MLS would come to Austin, to this current state of affairs — successfully hosting an All-Star Game, returning to the playoffs, coming heartbreakingly close to a major trophy, and yet unsettled and unsatisfied.

I'm absolutely invested in seeing how the club responds in its roster build, on the field, and in evolving Q2 Stadium in 2026. It's good to strive and want more. It's understandable to be frustrated. And I'm excited to chronicle how it evolves over these next few crucial — and I do believe them to be crucial — months.

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.