The curious case of Myrto Uzuni

We're 10 matches into Myrto Uzuni's MLS career, and it's hard to explain why the Albanian designated player – brought to Austin FC from Granada for a reported $12.3 million transfer fee on Jan. 24 – only has one goal so far.

Since arriving in the States, he's become a new father – with his wife giving birth to his new son back in Barcelona – and he's emerged as a humble, hard-working, affable teammate who is doing and saying many of the things you'd want a player to do and say.

And he's not just any player – he's the player who boldly grabbed the No. 10 jersey vacated by the club's all-team leading scorer and arguably most talented player to date, who left after his goal output dwindled from 22 in an MVP-caliber 2022 to 11 and seven in the two subsequent years.

In that final season in Verde, Sebastián Driussi scored on 10.4% of his 67 total shots and 29% of his 24 shots on target to finish with what many characterized as a disappointing end product for a player of his stature and salary.

It's early times, but Uzuni has scored on just 5% of his total shots and 12.5% of his shots on target so far this season, and were to get as many shots on target as 2024 Driussi at that scoring rate, he would have three goals.

FBref looks at shooting statistics for 692 different MLS players (so far) in 2025. In the goals minus expected goals category, measuring how much a player actually scores compared to what xG says that player should be scoring, Uzuni is No. 4 on that big list with a value of -2.0, meaning his xG chances add up to 3.0 so far, and he's only scored the one goal. Teammate Brandon Vázquez is alarmingly at the very "top" of the list, with a -2.9 (two goals minus 4.9 xG) helped along by a missed penalty kick.

Whether paired up top in a 4-4-2 or split in a 4-3-3 slotting Uzuni in as a left wing, neither player has been able to find a groove in what's been a slow-starting partnership, despite combining for a decent 7.9 xG. (If Vázquez had five goals and Uzuni had three right now – putting them on pace for 17 and 11 respectively – we'd be talking much more differently about them.

But in Saturday's match against Houston, which Vázquez missed with illness, Uzuni had the chance to be the offense's main focal point. He responded by only getting 10 touches, the lowest he's had in his seven starts and his lowest since a meager four touches in his 29 minutes debuting as a sub at Portland. He got off a single shot in the 41st minute, registering 0.28 xG on a glorious would-be assist from Jon Gallagher, only to shoot the close-range attempt straight at Dynamo goalkeeper Jonathan Bond, then leading to a chaotic sequence that brings about a Jáder Obrian attempt but is ultimately fruitless.

Watch Uzuni in the highlights clip, on the sequence that starts at 0:57 and goes until about 1:15. When he flubs the attempt, does he attack the goal anew? He does not. He wheels off to the side and puts his hands on his head in disbelief, then floats back into a quasi-ready position to serve as an outlet, as his teammates struggle to retain possession against a collapsed Dynamo defense.

Finally, as a Besard Šabović giveaway fully extinguishes the barely-hanging-on chance in front of goal, Uzuni again stops and puts his hands on his head in what might be his most concerning bad-body-language moment of the no-longer-all-that-young season.

After the match, head coach Nico Estévez expressed belief that "one day we'll score the goals."

I'm no longer convinced that Myrto Uzuni believes that.

Numbers tell a story

First of all, this is 2025 Myrto Uzuni through eight appearances, comparing his numbers to other forwards around the league.

You probably notice that aside from a few encouraging spikes, Uzuni has a pedestrian and even terrible radar chart distribution. I'm going to point you to the three lowest and most distressing stats here:

• Second percentile (with first being the worst you can have) in progressive passes received;
• Second percentile in touches; and
• Fifth percentile in non-penalty goals.

In short, these three stats together tell you he's not seeing a lot of the ball and is therefore not scoring. But other than pass completion, he's not doing much in any of the possession categories – a disappointment given Granada-era highlight reels in which we saw him marauding down the field with massive progressive carries en route to creating his own shot.

The issues with getting the ball to him were evident in the passing map from last Saturday. (He's the CF in this map, and the thicker the line, the more passes between the players. While Houston's map is also not ideal, you can see the difference in getting the ball to attacking players.)

Uzuni's pass completion rate of nearly 82%, which is quite good, is tempered by his only attempting about 16 passes per 90. If you connect on that rate with that few passes, you're completing about 13 passes over the course of entire match. Just a little more than one per 90 registers as a progressive pass — which has a complicated metric based around the idea of getting it 10 yards closer to goal, so part of the issue could be that he's playing up top a lot, but is also playing out wide some.

Let's compare him to another big-splash signing that happened this offseason.

Kévin Denkey, unfortunately for Verde, is not an Eastern Conference abstraction; he's a player that Austin FC will have to defend against on the road when the team travels to Cincinnati in less than two weeks. Right now, Denkey is contributing a lot more in many different categories, and is looking like (with his six goals on 4.5 xG) the striker that FCC has been missing since, well, Vázquez scored 18 goals for Knifey Lion in 2022.

Speaking of Vázquez ...

While they're both disappointing on the offensive end, the striking thing about the two together (pun wasn't going to be intended, but I sort of like it now) is the defensive numbers that Vázquez has been able to put up, and he's still doing much more with possession, though he's in the 2nd percentile in pass completion, which even for a target center forward isn't great.

Speaking of disappointing, Emmanuel Latte Lath "only" has five goals for a struggling Atlanta United, but it's been a streaky five, with two in the opener, two matches without a goal, a three-match run with one goal each match, and then the last three matches without a goal. He's averaging a shade under 26 touches a match, but averaging 31.5 touches in matches when he scores vs. 21 a match when he doesn't.

Here's what that looks like.

Also, Latte Lath comes to Q2 Stadium in 15 days. Yes, they'll face a striker with six goals who came in on a $16.2 million transfer fee and then face one with five goals who came on a $22 million transfer free four days later. Good times!

Here's a look at Uzuni compared to a striker he just played against. First, the 2025 numbers (which is not great for both, but non-penalties and goals favor Ponce).

Now, we'll shift this to the last 365 days for both to work in those stats.

With three goals, Ponce leads in the most important metric of all, and while Uzuni's contributing more on defense over the past full year (as Ponce isn't contributing much as all), he's also getting more progressive passes in and more touches overall.

(This season, those aren't happening a fantastic amount as the Dynamo work to reshuffle their midfield, but Ponce is still getting the service that's helping him get more shots (26, six more than Uzuni, though Uzuni does have one more shot on target at this stage).

And finally, let's look at a striker new to MLS in 2024, with a new baby who struggled in the early part of his debut season in a Nico Estévez system, but eventually came good with 16 goals by season's end.

As we covered in our preseason exclusive interview with Estévez, Musa did eventually acclimate and settling into scoring. But as we've previously discussed, most of those goals came after Estévez was relieved of his duties (which Musa apologized to Estévez for, as he tells it) and FC Dallas shifted to a more attack-minded approach (though at the expense of what they'd built defensively, and the team still missed the playoffs though playing at a much higher PPG pace under interim coach Peter Luccin, who still remains an assistant coach at FCD).

Given their styles of play, what Musa is becoming might be more a model for what Vázquez might recapture. Just for fun, here's a look at Musa's past 365 days vs. the breakout Vázquez season of 2022.

Musa is parked on three goals right now after 10 matches, but perhaps he's a slow-starting forward even when there's not a new league and new weather and a new baby to navigate.

So, what now?

Fans and players have been talking about a metaphorical dam holding back all the goals Verde are capable of scoring, with the notion that just a single goal could unleash it. The recent home match against the Galaxy set up for that, as the defending champs have one of the leakiest defenses in the league, but Verde couldn't muster a goal (even having been awarded a penalty kick) until the 81st minute. They've scored two goals in one of ten matches, one goal in five matches, and no goals in four matches. This past weekend, Nashville matched Austin's season output in a single match – albeit, a weird one against the Fire.

Uzuni wants to score. He's said so. His face has said so after missed chances and post-match locker room interviews about missed chances. The next opportunity to do so comes at home on Saturday, though it is against a Minnesota team that's only let in 10 goals so far this season – the same as Austin.

Presumably, Uzuni and Vázquez will be on the field together again, putting their chemistry and compatibility back in focus, not to mention their combined and vast xG underperformance.

Whatever resources the club can muster – including a sports psychologist, which is a well tapped in prior years – now is the time. Austin's hold on third place is tenuous given the keen competition in the West, Saturday's match starts off a month of eight and possibly nine matches, and the team's ability to hang onto one-goal leads appears increasingly to be Brendan Hines-Ike-dependent.

Uzuni said he came here to score goals and break records. We admired the ambition at the time. It's now time to make good on that ... to avoid his being added to the list of Austin FC designated players falling short of expectations.

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