We ponder an intriguing question: Would Eduard Atuesta in Verde make sense?

Matt Doyle, who covers all 30 MLS teams for MLSSoccer.com, has a difficult task in trying to provide insights on all of those teams. He watches a lot of soccer for his job, so he sees quite a bit from teams, and he does have some good insights across the board, but he's never going to have the kind of exclusive eye on Austin FC than any of us covering the team here will have.

His article on what some jokingly call "the realtor site" (go to MLS.com rather than MLSSoccer.com and you'll see why) or "Major League Soccer soccer dot com" from Friday ruffled a few Verde feathers. It had some complimentary things to say about Austin's offseason moves, to be clear, but also had an incomplete picture of what Austin might be, and at least some of it had to do with what I sent him two days before an audience with Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez on Sunday made 2025 a little clearer.

In his article assessing the Myrto Uzuni signing, he wrote:

The issue is there’s no longer really a natural home for that type of player at the very top of the game, as the 4-2-3-1 and the 4-3-3 have basically killed the second forward. The meta has changed, shifting in the direction of pure pitch control, which has led most teams to drop that second forward in favor of a third central midfielder (The other position greatly affected: the No. 10. There are almost no classic 10s at the very highest level anymore since “individual genius” roster builds have been replaced by the press, positional play, playmaking wingers or some combination of all three).

Anyway, Uzuni is showing, this year in LaLiga 2, that second forward remains his best spot. He showed, last year in LaLiga, that he could still be a threat on the counter from the left in a 4-3-3 – though also that he’s not going to be able to add much in the way of possession, playmaking or 1v1 ability when he’s out there.

I don’t think Austin want to be a counterattacking team; I think they want to be a possession team that generates chances with the ball. But they now have three front-line DPs who aren’t really going to help a ton with the first part of that equation.

So now there’s a ton of pressure on this midfield to control the game. That control then sets up the pre-conditions for Osman Bukari (on the right side) or Guilherme Biro (overlapping on the left) to find space wide and deliver final balls across the six. Those balls across the six are how Uzuni and fellow DP Brandon Vázquez score their goals. They won’t be able to add much without that kind of service.

Here's what I wrote him in response to a Substack article he posted on Friday, Jan. 17, speculating that Verde might play a 3-5-2 this year:

On Austin's formation, I'd expect a base 4-3-3 (it's Estevez, after all), but I'd imagine the formation to be somewhat fluid, with Biro cheating up the left flank from his LB position (as he is wont to do) and Uzuni cheating inside. From highlights I saw, Uzuni really likes to bang in shots from the 18, so I can see him doing a lot of that and either scoring or Vazquez/Bukari cleaning up rebounds for tap-in goals.

The biggest thing facing Verde now is getting a playmaker. Right now, I see a platoon of Owen Wolff, Dani Pereira, and Diego Rubio in that role, and not super confident about any of those. Stuver and the back line are solid, getting Dubersarsky as an understudy to Ilie puts the 6 in better shape than it was last year, and Driussi leaving actually gives Austin latitude to go after a 10, though it's now going to be at best a U22 or TAM-level playmaker. Evander or Acosta on this team instead of Uzuni would have been fun, but this has the potential to be fun as well.

Of course, two days later, we learned that Uzuni would likely see second-forward minutes in a 4-4-2. But Doyle might have missed my article about that, because in the MLS article from this past Friday, he went on to say:

Where’s that leave Austin? Well, I like Owen Wolff and Dani Pereira a lot, and Ilie Sánchez has always been a delight. Besard Šabović is more of an unknown, with scouting reports and advanced data suggesting he’ll probably be more of a worker than an orchestrator. Same for Nicolás Dubersarsky, the young Argentine d-mid they spent a U22 Initiative slot on.

Which is to say they have some options, and those options could coalesce into a more functional midfield than what we’ve seen from their first few years of existence.

But the bet, between hiring head coach Nico Estévez and making a big splash on Uzuni and Vazquez, is the midfield will be more than functional: the bet is the midfield will control the game. So there’s got to be another big signing coming here. The moves they made this winter don’t make sense without it.

I get it; he's busy. But he did offer one last suggestion worth exploring.

By the way, know who’s almost certainly available on a non-DP number and would make a ton of sense? Eduard Atuesta. We’ve seen him make this game model work in MLS both as a No. 6 and as a No. 8. He’d look good this year pulling the strings in Verde & Black.

Let's ponder this.

Who is Eduard Atuesta?

Atuesta began his pro soccer career with Independiente Medellín in his native Colombia, and then came to LAFC in 2018, where he remained until 2021, winning Best XI honors in 2019.

He was then moved to Palmeiras, returned to LAFC on loan in 2024 — where he played with Ilie Sánchez (including 35 minutes together in their team's 1-1 draw with Austin on June 19 and about 20 minutes together in their Sept. 18 rematch, also a 1-1 draw) – and is currently back with Palmeiras. According to Transfermarkt, he's on contract through the end of 2026.

Here's what his FBref chart for the last 365 days looks like:

As you can see, he does a lot of things quite well. But do you know who else does a lot of midfield things quite well per FBref?

While Pereira offers a little more in blocks and pass completion, Atuesta's even better as a ball progressor (which is one of Pereira's perceived strengths), and brings plenty of goals and shot-creating actions to the offensive mix, and interceptions on the defensive end.

Here's another interesting comparison – with Hassani Dotson, currently a Minnesota United midfielder reportedly unhappy with his current situation. Dotson, like Atuesta, is a player likely to be similarly just under the $743,750 max salary budget charge, even if he gets a bit of a salary bump from where he currently (unhappily?) is.

(Players above this salary level either need to be bought down with targeted allocation money, like Julio Cascante, or are designated players and can earn whatever the club is willing to pay but only count $743,750 against a team's salary cap.)

And, even though we've established this is far from a perfect chart for him, here's how Atuesta compares to the central midfielder that sporting director Rodolfo Borrell just picked up.

Atuesta appears, at first glance, to be an upgrade over all existing central midfielders, and while he's not a pure No. 10, he's a better overall creator than any of the existing midfielders. While his presence is speculative at best, here's what the starting lineup could look like with Atuesta as one of the dual 8s.

Theoretically, if you wanted to activate Šabović or Pereira (or Wolff), you could deploy Uzuni as a left wing in a 4-3-3 and have one of them partner with Atuesta in a dual 8 set up behind Ilie.

Here's a reminder of how Austin lined up for the 2024 opener – one of the worst first halves in Verde history.

Behold the level of upgrade ... and 2024 starters like Pereira and Jon Gallagher could create appreciable depth.

One more thing

Atuesta, currently playing soccer in Brazil, hails from Colombia. He did get a green card in 2019, which theoretically makes it easy to bring him back to the U.S. to play soccer.

But with a deportation-related conflict brewing between the U.S. and Colombia less than a week into President Trump's second term, Atuesta could be an early case study in how geopolitics make an already unpredictable global soccer market even more unpredictable.

Even if this is a transfer wholly hatched in Matt Doyle's brain, it involves a player from a country that our new president has begun sparring with, and that's another facet of MLS transfer sagas that now needs to factor into the sometimes complex equation.

(Update: As of Monday morning, the conflict appears to be resolved without application of the steep tariffs that the Trump administration was threatening, but the point about unpredictability still stands.)

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