Dear Khaled El-Ahmad, these are our demands (for Austin FC)
Khaled El-Ahmad was announced as Austin FC's chief soccer officer on Tuesday. That got us thinking about what could be, and so we got our typing fingers working
Austin has a new Chief Soccer Officer as of Tuesday morning. What more appropriate time could there be for us to set our expectations for him as longtime watchers of the club (with tongue planted firmly in-cheek)? We’ll come up with more over time, I’m sure, but these are the most important ones off the tops of our heads, grouped into three categories: Roster Moves, Culture Moves, and Wild Card.
Roster moves
Moisés: I would love to see him move fast on renewing key contributors before they and their reps need to start fishing elsewhere. I made mention in Khaled’s opening press conference that he has some key players with deals expiring as (very) soon as December, which Brendan Hines-Ike noted in this week’s pre-Toluca presser and Christian Ramírez did in a mixed zone appearance recently.
These deals in particular (and others with near-ish-term expiration dates) could very well already be in the works, and among moves that Majority Owner and Chairman Anthony Precourt referred to as not having Khaled’s “fingerprints” on them … but any of these would necessarily involve the new CSO having final signoff at this point.
To take CEO Andy Loughnane at his word, El-Ahmad being the club’s top choice by far would make me assume he would definitely be able to veto anything he has strong feelings about. Thing is, that “first choice” status to me would also indicate him to be much more likely aligned with those sorts of decisions-already-in-process by Loughnane’s revised, “flattened” leadership org.
Phil: I do believe, in retrospect, that Precourt discussing the moves in the works not being attributable to KEA was advance PR about the Owen Wolff move — which does sound like it's been developing for quite some time, as Wolff was apparently interested in a move out this past offseason, and SKC made their interest known to Austin in January.
But now that Austin's cleared out some players and accumulated reserves via some outgoing moves — at least $6.6 million between Wolff and Dani Pereira, which was about as good as you could expect in 2026 for Austin's Perennially Two Most Movable Young Assets – the next two windows provide opportunities to use the amassed (or maybe still amassing?) warchest on new players that will work well in head-coach-in-waiting Jim Curtin's system.
I am but a simple man. Here are my wishes for Austin FC additions:
A true destroyer-style No. 6. I love Ilie, but Ilie is more of an organizer. In the Union's heyday under Curtin, Jose "El Brujo" Martinez was devastating in front of a back four, and then had moments like this on the offensive end — still one of my favorite goals ever anywhere.
A pure No. 10. We've never had one. I want one. In fact, this is me when it comes to a true chance creator at the tip of a Curtinian diamond in a 4-4-2 diamond formation.
A 20-goal-a-season striker. (Verde's only now just achieved, if you count all comps, having a 10-goal striker. And I think Myrto Uzuni as a second striker in a Curtin system would be even better than he's been under Arnaud, now that he's reached that magic double-digit threshold.)
I would even settle for a 15-goal striker, like Julian Carranza was in 2022 for the Union. (If he could give us at least one of these.)
Culture moves
Moisés: I would love to see El-Ahmad remove some of the performative mystery and obscuring of decision making we’ve seen since 2021, both inside the sporting operation and elsewhere. Based on his commitment to engage with the press off-the-record not only early but often, I’m thinking this is already in the cards.
One of the things that has led former and never-colleagues to accuse credentialed ATX press of being anything from “propagandists” to “paid media” has been the club’s insistence on the condition that we not ever acknowledge that off-the-record conversations happen in the first place. I have no personal issue when there are conditions and aspects of meetings or conversations that need to remain not just off-the-record but “as if they never happened,” but there was previously this weird act of pretending like they never communicated with us off-record or on background.
I should note that I wasn’t around for Claudio Reyna, so I can’t and won’t speak to what happened under him. My joining the press corps coincided with Rodolfo Borrell’s hiring and first solo press conference. During his tenure, press did have some organized or otherwise scheduled closed door, off-record access to Rodo. Many topics and aspects of those conversations and meetings (which weren’t that many) require us to continue to keep a lot of details in confidence.
Other off-record conversations were extraordinarily spur-of-the-moment and occasionally led to wild misunderstandings of what was and was not reportable in different cases. Whoever of us was being told what we were being told would find ourselves conferring about “why the hell did or would he tell us that?” more often than not.
The biggest problem as a result was that he would say stuff to one or multiple of us off-the-record … but then he would say the same stuff or yet more to fans in informal settings that those fans in turn would then immediately share with various of us in the press corps. That, my friends, then puts the off-record things on the record, and press get to scramble to figure out how or if to responsibly and ethically report it.
I am fully convinced these sorts of issues were contributors to his dismissal, and I say that not based on any off-the-record nor background conversations with anyone still at the club.
One of my favorite things at face value about the hiring of Khaled El-Ahmad is that I have zero expectation that these sorts of off-the-record conversations will be remotely as fraught as they were with Rodo. It’s also my distinct impression that many things have been learned over the last six years, two coaches, and two Sporting Directors. Those “learnings” have contributed not just to this hiring, but the revised org structure surrounding it.
KEA leading with an insistence that he needs for us to have context and that both ends of the conversation need to lead with building trust? What a breath of fresh air and stark contrast to corralling us to bloviate, “Trust me, guys, I’m really fucking good at my job" (which Rodo said in my presence), or, "Trust me guys, I’m never getting fucking fired,” which he said to colleagues in another instance. That he said a version of the first thing in public was one thing, but the way he said it in private, in a manner transparently meant to intimidate and brush off the role of the press in the first place? I knew he was, indeed, gonna get fucking fired.
KEA is already giving me my wish here from all indications, drawing down the temperature to what he will soon learn is the classic Central Texas style of how “low and slow” is the best way to make brisket.
I can see a future where every slight rumor or move by the club does not have all of us who follow Austin in constant, "Oh, no, what’s happening now?!” mode.
Phil: To expound a bit on what Moisés set up, what doomed the first two Austin FC sporting directors to ultimate failure also doomed Creon in the classic Greek tragedy Antigone — hubris, but in particular, hubris intertwined with fatefully bad decision making. To take you back into Austin FC's historical vaults a bit, here's an actual quote in a press release heralding a designated player signing:
"He’s a winger with a lot of quality and experience competing in some of the top leagues around the world. His abilities are an excellent fit for our style of play.”
You know what that is, right? That's former Austin FC sporting director Claudio Reyna praising Emiliano Rigoni, who seems to have been, when all the dust settled, Sebastian Driussi's friend signed as a favor to Sebastian Driussi.
That might be reductive, but eventually, this is what the club said upon Rigoni's exit, less than two years later:
Austin FC announced on Tuesday that the Club has waived and exercised a Buyout of a Guaranteed Contract on winger Emiliano Rigoni. Rigoni will no longer occupy a Designated Player tag, and he will also no longer occupy a Senior roster spot and International Slot. Furthermore, Rigoni’s wages will no longer count against the Club’s 2024 salary budget.
No thank yous. No recounting of statistics or great moments. (He did not, shall we say, put up designated player-worthy numbers.) Just a link out to the roster rules to provide a helpful explanation of how a Buyout of a Guaranteed Contract works.
Rodolfo Borrell discovering the clause in Rigoni's contract allowing him to be locked into another guaranteed year with just 12 appearances was perhaps the greatest service he performed during his time as sporting director. He did, to be fair, have a talent for moving players on club-unfriendly contracts (or unhappy players) to other teams.
Stylistically, KEA is about as far from Borrell as you can get. Indeed, upon leaving the introductory press conference, I said. "He's the anti-Rodo." And I feel like that's intentional. Bluster and bravado are tolerable in a coach or CSO when the team's doing well and the signings are home runs. You know where things stood when Borrell left.
"This is not a reset; it's an evolution," El-Ahmad said during his time on the mic Tuesday. This does feel to me like it's a reset. I just so happen to think a reset is welcome.
Wild card
Moisés: I want the “we are one club” CSO to push for rebranding the second team to remove the number from their name. Austin has unused tree metaphors galore to explore that don’t involve the inherent minimalization of the “2” moniker. Is this “important?"
This longshot last wish/hope/demand comes from knowing El-Ahmad’s background includes a fair amount of work in branding and marketing, combined with his open show of respect for MLS Next Pro as a development league. This also may be out of Austin’s hands to control directly due to the shift in ownership/management of MLSNP. I have no idea. For all I know, they could be in the process of moving the way North Texas went from Arlington to Mansfield (more than 80 minutes from Frisco!). For the record, I hope ATX II don’t move, and that MLSNP move more games back to Fridays, but I know a CSO doesn’t control those things.
The “one club” ethos sure works better with everyone training in the same building though.
One of the early ideas for what to call Austin’s Supporters Section involved evoking “raíces,” the Spanish word for roots. Oakland Roots already exist in USL-C, so the word in English is already claimed by a pro club, but Austin’s ongoing dual-language identity would fit beautifully with “Raíces (de) Austin” or “Austin Raíces.”
They can have that for free. It wasn’t technically my idea in the first place, the fans came up with it.
In exchange, maybe the club could figure out how to submit to three years of requests from fans to make those “second team” jerseys available for sale since North Texas, Colorado Rapids 2, and other MLSNP sides have sold theirs.
Phil: Based on my interactions with KEA on Tuesday after the press conference — and despite him shutting down my request for confirmation on the Jayden Nelson and CJ Fodrey exits — I'm looking forward to any opportunities to get a little more of a peek behind the curtain on the roster building and contract crafting process.
What kind of birthday math goes into scouting U22 prospects and seeing how long they can be locked into a U22 contract for? What happens to all those contracts that were through a 2027 season that became a 2027-28 season with the schedule change? What data points figure best into player evaluation? Is g+ a nonsense metric or is there value to it?
These are some of the questions rattling around in my head, dislodged during this very active week, and El-Ahmad seems like the kind of CSO who would be willing to answer these. How much on-the-record vs. off-the-record I'm able to get is another matter entirely, and it's one that I anticipating navigating in the coming weeks.
But I feel like, with KEA, there's more of a chance to get a fuller picture of what it's like to build a roster in MLS. With Borrell, we got occasional glimpses into his dealmaking, portrayed in a light in which Borrell was executing a series of masterstrokes in the global football market. In this new era, I believe we'll get glimpses into the pragmatism and collaboration we've been initially promised. KEA will be the conductor, but he won't be the whole choir.
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.
Per interim head coach Davy Arnaud, Austin FC fought valiantly against Toluca FC, despite a red card presenting his team with an obvious obstacle. He also had thoughts on that sending off.
Austin FC hung tough with Toluca for a while, but a red card followed by a penalty set the visitors back. Yet, the scoreline wasn't quite indicative of how closely the match was played.
Toluca FC is one of Liga MX's most successful teams in recent years. Here's more about the team Austin FC aims to stop from getting another trophy on Wednesday.
Our heads are spinning! Following two expected outbound moves on Wednesday morning, Austin FC followed with a third unexpected move that potentially sets Verde up for a summer signing.
Austin has a new Chief Soccer Officer as of Tuesday morning. What more appropriate time could there be for us to set our expectations for him as longtime watchers of the club (with tongue planted firmly in-cheek)? We’ll come up with more over time, I’m sure, but these are the most important ones off the tops of our heads, grouped into three categories: Roster Moves, Culture Moves, and Wild Card.
Roster moves
Moisés: I would love to see him move fast on renewing key contributors before they and their reps need to start fishing elsewhere. I made mention in Khaled’s opening press conference that he has some key players with deals expiring as (very) soon as December, which Brendan Hines-Ike noted in this week’s pre-Toluca presser and Christian Ramírez did in a mixed zone appearance recently.
These deals in particular (and others with near-ish-term expiration dates) could very well already be in the works, and among moves that Majority Owner and Chairman Anthony Precourt referred to as not having Khaled’s “fingerprints” on them … but any of these would necessarily involve the new CSO having final signoff at this point.
To take CEO Andy Loughnane at his word, El-Ahmad being the club’s top choice by far would make me assume he would definitely be able to veto anything he has strong feelings about. Thing is, that “first choice” status to me would also indicate him to be much more likely aligned with those sorts of decisions-already-in-process by Loughnane’s revised, “flattened” leadership org.
Phil: I do believe, in retrospect, that Precourt discussing the moves in the works not being attributable to KEA was advance PR about the Owen Wolff move — which does sound like it's been developing for quite some time, as Wolff was apparently interested in a move out this past offseason, and SKC made their interest known to Austin in January.
But now that Austin's cleared out some players and accumulated reserves via some outgoing moves — at least $6.6 million between Wolff and Dani Pereira, which was about as good as you could expect in 2026 for Austin's Perennially Two Most Movable Young Assets – the next two windows provide opportunities to use the amassed (or maybe still amassing?) warchest on new players that will work well in head-coach-in-waiting Jim Curtin's system.
I am but a simple man. Here are my wishes for Austin FC additions:
I would even settle for a 15-goal striker, like Julian Carranza was in 2022 for the Union. (If he could give us at least one of these.)
Culture moves
Moisés: I would love to see El-Ahmad remove some of the performative mystery and obscuring of decision making we’ve seen since 2021, both inside the sporting operation and elsewhere. Based on his commitment to engage with the press off-the-record not only early but often, I’m thinking this is already in the cards.
One of the things that has led former and never-colleagues to accuse credentialed ATX press of being anything from “propagandists” to “paid media” has been the club’s insistence on the condition that we not ever acknowledge that off-the-record conversations happen in the first place. I have no personal issue when there are conditions and aspects of meetings or conversations that need to remain not just off-the-record but “as if they never happened,” but there was previously this weird act of pretending like they never communicated with us off-record or on background.
I should note that I wasn’t around for Claudio Reyna, so I can’t and won’t speak to what happened under him. My joining the press corps coincided with Rodolfo Borrell’s hiring and first solo press conference. During his tenure, press did have some organized or otherwise scheduled closed door, off-record access to Rodo. Many topics and aspects of those conversations and meetings (which weren’t that many) require us to continue to keep a lot of details in confidence.
Other off-record conversations were extraordinarily spur-of-the-moment and occasionally led to wild misunderstandings of what was and was not reportable in different cases. Whoever of us was being told what we were being told would find ourselves conferring about “why the hell did or would he tell us that?” more often than not.
The biggest problem as a result was that he would say stuff to one or multiple of us off-the-record … but then he would say the same stuff or yet more to fans in informal settings that those fans in turn would then immediately share with various of us in the press corps. That, my friends, then puts the off-record things on the record, and press get to scramble to figure out how or if to responsibly and ethically report it.
I am fully convinced these sorts of issues were contributors to his dismissal, and I say that not based on any off-the-record nor background conversations with anyone still at the club.
One of my favorite things at face value about the hiring of Khaled El-Ahmad is that I have zero expectation that these sorts of off-the-record conversations will be remotely as fraught as they were with Rodo. It’s also my distinct impression that many things have been learned over the last six years, two coaches, and two Sporting Directors. Those “learnings” have contributed not just to this hiring, but the revised org structure surrounding it.
KEA leading with an insistence that he needs for us to have context and that both ends of the conversation need to lead with building trust? What a breath of fresh air and stark contrast to corralling us to bloviate, “Trust me, guys, I’m really fucking good at my job" (which Rodo said in my presence), or, "Trust me guys, I’m never getting fucking fired,” which he said to colleagues in another instance. That he said a version of the first thing in public was one thing, but the way he said it in private, in a manner transparently meant to intimidate and brush off the role of the press in the first place? I knew he was, indeed, gonna get fucking fired.
KEA is already giving me my wish here from all indications, drawing down the temperature to what he will soon learn is the classic Central Texas style of how “low and slow” is the best way to make brisket.
I can see a future where every slight rumor or move by the club does not have all of us who follow Austin in constant, "Oh, no, what’s happening now?!” mode.
Phil: To expound a bit on what Moisés set up, what doomed the first two Austin FC sporting directors to ultimate failure also doomed Creon in the classic Greek tragedy Antigone — hubris, but in particular, hubris intertwined with fatefully bad decision making. To take you back into Austin FC's historical vaults a bit, here's an actual quote in a press release heralding a designated player signing:
"He’s a winger with a lot of quality and experience competing in some of the top leagues around the world. His abilities are an excellent fit for our style of play.”
You know what that is, right? That's former Austin FC sporting director Claudio Reyna praising Emiliano Rigoni, who seems to have been, when all the dust settled, Sebastian Driussi's friend signed as a favor to Sebastian Driussi.
That might be reductive, but eventually, this is what the club said upon Rigoni's exit, less than two years later:
Austin FC announced on Tuesday that the Club has waived and exercised a Buyout of a Guaranteed Contract on winger Emiliano Rigoni. Rigoni will no longer occupy a Designated Player tag, and he will also no longer occupy a Senior roster spot and International Slot. Furthermore, Rigoni’s wages will no longer count against the Club’s 2024 salary budget.
No thank yous. No recounting of statistics or great moments. (He did not, shall we say, put up designated player-worthy numbers.) Just a link out to the roster rules to provide a helpful explanation of how a Buyout of a Guaranteed Contract works.
Rodolfo Borrell discovering the clause in Rigoni's contract allowing him to be locked into another guaranteed year with just 12 appearances was perhaps the greatest service he performed during his time as sporting director. He did, to be fair, have a talent for moving players on club-unfriendly contracts (or unhappy players) to other teams.
Stylistically, KEA is about as far from Borrell as you can get. Indeed, upon leaving the introductory press conference, I said. "He's the anti-Rodo." And I feel like that's intentional. Bluster and bravado are tolerable in a coach or CSO when the team's doing well and the signings are home runs. You know where things stood when Borrell left.
"This is not a reset; it's an evolution," El-Ahmad said during his time on the mic Tuesday. This does feel to me like it's a reset. I just so happen to think a reset is welcome.
Wild card
Moisés: I want the “we are one club” CSO to push for rebranding the second team to remove the number from their name. Austin has unused tree metaphors galore to explore that don’t involve the inherent minimalization of the “2” moniker. Is this “important?"
This longshot last wish/hope/demand comes from knowing El-Ahmad’s background includes a fair amount of work in branding and marketing, combined with his open show of respect for MLS Next Pro as a development league. This also may be out of Austin’s hands to control directly due to the shift in ownership/management of MLSNP. I have no idea. For all I know, they could be in the process of moving the way North Texas went from Arlington to Mansfield (more than 80 minutes from Frisco!). For the record, I hope ATX II don’t move, and that MLSNP move more games back to Fridays, but I know a CSO doesn’t control those things.
The “one club” ethos sure works better with everyone training in the same building though.
One of the early ideas for what to call Austin’s Supporters Section involved evoking “raíces,” the Spanish word for roots. Oakland Roots already exist in USL-C, so the word in English is already claimed by a pro club, but Austin’s ongoing dual-language identity would fit beautifully with “Raíces (de) Austin” or “Austin Raíces.”
They can have that for free. It wasn’t technically my idea in the first place, the fans came up with it.
In exchange, maybe the club could figure out how to submit to three years of requests from fans to make those “second team” jerseys available for sale since North Texas, Colorado Rapids 2, and other MLSNP sides have sold theirs.
Phil: Based on my interactions with KEA on Tuesday after the press conference — and despite him shutting down my request for confirmation on the Jayden Nelson and CJ Fodrey exits — I'm looking forward to any opportunities to get a little more of a peek behind the curtain on the roster building and contract crafting process.
What kind of birthday math goes into scouting U22 prospects and seeing how long they can be locked into a U22 contract for? What happens to all those contracts that were through a 2027 season that became a 2027-28 season with the schedule change? What data points figure best into player evaluation? Is g+ a nonsense metric or is there value to it?
These are some of the questions rattling around in my head, dislodged during this very active week, and El-Ahmad seems like the kind of CSO who would be willing to answer these. How much on-the-record vs. off-the-record I'm able to get is another matter entirely, and it's one that I anticipating navigating in the coming weeks.
But I feel like, with KEA, there's more of a chance to get a fuller picture of what it's like to build a roster in MLS. With Borrell, we got occasional glimpses into his dealmaking, portrayed in a light in which Borrell was executing a series of masterstrokes in the global football market. In this new era, I believe we'll get glimpses into the pragmatism and collaboration we've been initially promised. KEA will be the conductor, but he won't be the whole choir.
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.
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