In the press conference that Austin media was bracing for — the one in which we’d have to ask about Austin FC being officially out of the playoff running, rather than just being on the cusp of that — head coach Josh Wolff returned to now-familiar tropes.
They grinded. They competed. They weren’t scoring the goals they needed despite noticeable improvement (which still didn’t move the needle on some key offensive metrics).
I tried a different tack to get insights, though: The concerning trend this team’s displayed at the end of each season. In September and October during Austin FC’s four years (which of course are all Josh Wolff-led), Verde has a 7-17-8 record. 2021 was an anamoly, being a COVID-impacted schedule, but the expansion team went 4-8-0 that season. In the last three, it’s been 3-9-8 — including the team’s best season in 2022, when it still went 1-3-2 in those final two months.
“It's a great question, Phil,” he started. “I don't know if it's obviously, at the end of the season, the schedule is pretty much about your own conference. I don't know if the heat has a cumulative effect on our guys; we've talked about this internally as well.” Noting that getting Sebastián Driussi and Moussa Djitté at the end of 2021 “may have given us a little bit more of an edge,” before considering another angle.
“Our home record isn't good enough,” he observed. “You know, we don't perform well enough at home on the road, I'd say it's by and large been adequate, but we just don't perform well enough at home. And I don't know if that's the stress players feel from being at home and being in front of the fans or the anxiety. I don't know. I can't put my finger on it, though, that we should be getting more points at home. The teams that make the playoffs, obviously, are typically quite strong at home, and that's a big disappointment, but this is the idea of what it's like at the end of the season. YWe've talked about it depth of a squad can can be part of that.”
“But you know, in our four years,” he added, “I think this was probably he most, the most strenuous year, where we just didn't have the players of the depth until the latter part of the year. So I can't really put my finger on it, but it's certainly something of note.”
