Spending the night, and other assorted tidbits from a press conference before a glut of games

Have you been enjoying the relative ease of the June schedule, in contrast to May, where games came in a fevered rush and felt perhaps a little more obligation than celebration by that San Diego away match?

Well, prepare for a July — at least the first half — that's going to be more like May than June.

Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez addressed the upcoming burst of schedule congestion as one of the main topics of conversation at Thursday's media session, ahead of Saturday's home match against LAFC.

For one, Verde players won't sleep in their own beds Tuesday night, following the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal match at San Jose, as a way to mitigate the weekend-midweek-weekend cycle they're about to embark on. They'll play four games between Saturday and July 16, before the All-Star break and the start of Leagues Cup brings more June-like yawing gaps between matches.

"We'll spend the night there in order to sleep well and recover coming after the game," Estévez revealed, adding that traveling late after a West Coast match "makes us struggle with sleeping hours, and doesn't help on the recovery side. We'll stay there, come back on Wednesday, train Thursday and Friday, and play Saturday against New England. I think after the New England game, we'll have two to three days to prepare, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, to prepare our travel on Tuesday to LA to play at the Galaxy."

He added, roster-wise, that it's very much a "one game at a time" approach — but that Robert Taylor could see a more expanded role (commensurate with his recently revealed $575,000 salary level) in the coming matches, now that he's (according to Estévez) recovered from an injury he incurred shortly after arriving in Austin.

"We just wanted to give continuity to some of the players that were playing more minutes, and that's it," he shared. "But I think he's doing a really good job, and he's getting in and as always, when you're a new player, it takes a little bit longer to get into the team. But I think he's doing a really good job, and we are working with him to use him. We have now a good stretch of games, and we're going to need everyone."

First thoughts on Beloko

Estévez also got the change to weigh in on Nicky Beloko, the newest Austin FC player, announced on Monday as the first signing of the 2025 summer transfer window — though he pledged to Verde back in January.

"He's a dynamic central midfielder," Estévez offered. "He can play in different roles on the midfield, like eight, six, but also could play in wide areas, if you need more controlling [of] the game, or more work rate and all these things."

While Estévez appeared to welcome that positional flexibility, we didn't get any new answers based on this to the questions about Ilie Sánchez, who has seen a playing time dropoff in recent matches, theoretically set to see more with another midfielder in the equation. We also don't know if Beloko's acquisition is a Jenga move that precedes a move away for either Dani Pereira or Owen Wolff — who while both would be missed for what they bring to the team, also have the most trade or transfer value of the group of Too Many Midfielders.

'A good learning lesson'

Both Estévez and Brendan Hines-Ike expressed disappoinment in the team's most recent performance in Seattle, and are aware of the challenges that a talented LAFC brings.

"LAFC is LAFC," Hines-Ike said. "They still have the same quality players that are there for the most part. And knowing LAFC and knowing how they perform, and speaking a lot with Ilie about how they respond to games like they had against Vancouver, they will be here to play and to win. So we need to be ready for that."

He colorfully added that coming off that loss, LAFC will have "the knife between their teeth."

As for last week's performance, Hines-Ike noted the team's aware that the goals they gave up — and how those happened — represented a regression from what they'd managed in their previous two wins.

"Both goals that happen ... were a chain effect," he observed. "It starts with an individual error, or two individual errors, that lead to more individual errors, right? For us, especially as a back line, we have to remember first and foremost, that the objective when you're broken down from a midfield is to then regain your back four as quickly as possible ... which even looking for the first goal, we do regain the four as a line, and then we quickly lose it right as the ball comes in.

"And I think just those little principles, which we've harped on a lot throughout the year and we've done quite well with, can be, again, a product of being on break, not having the rhythm of doing that on a regular basis at the same time," he added. "I think that's been our biggest strength this year that we've talked about. I remember talking about with you at the beginning of the preseason, that when we're broken down in transition, that we get our guys behind the ball and regain numbers so we don't get countered on. It's something we've talked about and something we've been good at for the most part of the year."

He then reassured everyone the defense will be ready for an opponent they nened to be ready for, describing the players as having a "heightened" awarness that Jesus Ferreira and Danny Musovski were able to deliver.

"That's a really good learning lesson for us coming into a game like this against LAFC, because no matter that it's at Q2, it will be a similar scenario where if we make mistakes, they will punish us quickly."

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