'A lot of room for me to improve': Mateja Đorđević meets the media

Now that Mateja Đorđević has arrived in Austin, the club figured it was time to get him out in front of the media.

Ahead of Saturday's pivotal match against the San Jose Earthquakes, Đorđević debuted before media members on Thursday about his time in Austin so far.

While the center back may not get on the field this weekend, Oleksandr Svatok's impending departure for international duty with Ukraine suddenly makes Đorđević the third center back available, with Julio Cascante a likely starter alongside Brendan Hines-Ike, for the Sept. 7 match against Sporting Kansas City, despite his limited runout this year (548 minutes, 10 appearances, seven starts, compared to 1868 minutes last season and over 2000 minutes in each of the previous three seasons).

"When I heard the first time that Austin FC wanted to sign me, I was really interested," Đorđević said. "I was really interested in that because I think it's a good opportunity for me, and MLS is a really good league and really good for young players.

"It's a lot of room for me to improve in Austin," he added, praising his new club. "I think I will be able to do that here."

Not entirely effusive in his answers throughout the nearly eight minutes of interviewing, Đorđević did have nice things to say about his new home, sharing, "A lot of people told me that Austin is most beautiful city in the USA, and for now, I think it's really beautiful."

He also talked about his acclimation process, noting, "I need to adapt to the team play," and unsurprisingly, given the shared experience of new players from Europe, "The heat ... I [am not] used to that so much. But like everything, I need to adapt to heat and play style and everything."

He also indicated that while he's a typical defender in that he likes "clearances and slide tackles," he also enjoys when his team has possession. While he might not be as adept in offense as Cascante (and we know relatively little about his game compared to other incoming players coming from higher-profile leagues), he could bring versatility to the back line — though you should probably temper expectations about extended minutes this season.

'We need to learn'

Meanwhile, Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez faced local media for the first time since his team returned home from suffering a 3-2 loss at Montréal, following a pair of home draws against Houston and Dallas – a three-match winless run which clouds their playoff picture.

"The most important thing is we need to learn from what happened against Montréal," he said. "We need to learn from what happened in the first half against Dallas."

"Against Montréal, we had a really good response in the second half. We got unlucky with the penalty," he observed, referring to the Mikkel Desler handball allowing the Prince Owusu PK that proved to be the decisive goal. "I was very sure we were going to tie the game because we were on top of that game at the end of the second half."

"We started ... with a lot of technical mistakes with the ball or missing balls, the decisions we made," Estévez said. "Some of the plan that we had in our defensive side, we kind of forgot about it was supposed to do. And in the second half, we address it at half time, and I think a much better job with just [adjusting] a couple things. We talk about things that we planned, but we wouldn't do it, and then we started doing it. And I think it's about how we can start the game — like we don't need to get punched in order to respond; we can be the ones that punch the opponent."

He expressed optimism ahead of the 8th vs. 9th place match that he and his team suddenly find themselves in – possibly preceding an 8th vs. 9th play-in game to start what would be only a second playoff appearance in the club's history, possibly against this very team.

"I think we have all the ingredients to make a good performance against San Jose," before observing, "The sport can go in different ways," citing their topsy-turvy rivalry — not counting the recent Open Cup win that went to a PK shootout, Austin's 1W 7D 2L against the Quakes, including a thrilling 4-3 win in April 2024 highlighted by Sebastián Driussi's 101st-minute goal, a swampy 3-3 draw in August 2022 that featured Matt Bersano in goal for the Quakes (prior to his time in Austin), and a 4-0 loss in 2021 that still registers as one of the club's lowest moments four years later.

A win would not only vault Verde over San Jose to get them at least 8th, with a chance to get as high as 6th (should Portland lose to Minnesota and Austin make up what's currently a four-goal goal differential gap), but would at least make this weird regular season series more uniform with two wins each and the mess of draws remaining between them.

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