'Personal circumstances': Austin FC sends player out, rather than bringing one in, at the transfer deadline

While other teams were bolstering themselves for the playoff run on Thursday, including a few surprises, Austin FC had a surprise of its own.

While the Colorado Rapids brought in Paxton Aaronson to fill in the Đorđe Mihailović-sized hole they created earlier this month, and FC Cincinnati engineered a reunion with Brazilian striker Brenner, the Verde front office set up Thursday's most obvious press conference question by announcing that midfielder Nicky Beloko — recently arrived from Swiss club Luzern, and appearing in one closed-door exhibition match during the Leagues Cup break — was being offloaded to Swiss club Lausanne-Sport due to "personal circumstances."

Asked about the makeup of the team – now down one central midfielder who didn't get a chance to appear in a game of any circumstance, and without a rest-of-season replacement incoming for Brandon Vázquez following his season-ending injury – Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez indicated he's confident in the squad he has.

"This team, these players, have shown that they can do things well and I am very happy with the group that I have," Estévez said in Spanish, citing the abilities of players like Besard Šabović, Robert Taylor, Jáder Obrian, and Jon Gallagher to slot in between Myrto Uzuni and the back line to fill out midfield and winger spots, adding, "We have very good possibilities and options."

He did grant, however, that Saturday's opponent — CF Montréal, hosting in Stade Saputo, where Verde haven't played since 2022, will provide a test not necessarily indicated by their modest season record.

"It's a tricky game because, as you said, the same as D.C. [United], everyone thinks that you should win that game because what it says in the table, but what I see when I analyze a team is the quality of the players, and they have quality players at top, like [Prince Owusu], the forward, is really good forward and [Dante] Sealy, I've coached him, is a really dangerous player."

Owusu, after a slow start to the season in which he rivaled Vázquez and Uzuni for the worst goals minus expected goals in the league, now has 11 goals on the season plus four assists, while Sealy is second in goals with four.

Estévez will also need to change his lineup from recent weeks, as Dani Pereira is out with yellow card accumulation — earlier in the week, that knowledge led some to speculate that Beloko might finally be activated on the Verde roster.

"If we have the mentality and we do things well, we can have the opportunity to win there," he said, noting that they've managed that in recent road matches — accumulating a 5-6-1 away record so far in 2025, for 16 of a possible 36 points compared to 19 of 39 gathered at home.

'No easy games in MLS'

Mikkel Desler concurred.

"We cannot be tricked by 'this is supposed to be an easy game,'" he said. "There are no easy games in MLS, plus when we play away, it's always super difficult, as everybody knows, to get three points away. But we've been doing well away, and I think we have a momentum right now, even though we didn't get three points in the last two games, I think there's definitely a sense of us improving, of us getting better as a team, and hopefully the reward will come on Saturday."

"If we had gone away with three points in those two games, most people have said that's fair enough," he added. "We did a lot of good things to deserve the three points, but we only got one in both of them, and that's not good enough."

In case you missed Tuesday's article, Austin's still got the easiest remaining slate of games gauging by opponents' points per game, and the match against Montréal coincides with Portland hosting San Diego and Colorado traveling to the Galaxy. A win Saturday combined with Timbers and Rapids losses could vault Verde into 6th, while a loss plus a San Jose win could put Austin in 9th behind its emergent rivals — with those teams facing off in Austin the following Saturday.

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