More Neville than Nancy? What PPGs tell us about Austin FC's coaching
Austin FC has had just two head coaches in its history, not counting current interim Davy Arnaud. One key metric tells us that Verde could be doing better with one of its presumed target head coaches.
Austin FC, as you know, is on the search for a new head coach. As far as we know, former Inter Miami CF and Portland Timbers head coach Phil Neville is not on the list. But judging from one key metric, it wouldn't be that far of a departure from what Verde's had so far.
This requires getting into the history of Austin FC managers, with stats in all contests according to Transfermarkt.
First, Josh Wolff — named manager before Austin FC's first game, and notably before a sporting director was in place, racked up a 51W 67L 30D record over 148 matches while helming the club between its 2021 opener and the penultimate match in the 2024 season. That's just 1.24 points per game, and over a full 34-match season, that works out to be a 42-point clip, or just below the playoff line — and that's including 2022, in which Wolff led Verde to 56 points.
Nico Estévez fared slightly better, going 20W 23L 13D in his 56 matches with the club, for a 1.30 PPG, or just over 44 points per 34-match season.
(Estévez actually hurt his overall MLS coaching record by being at Austin; he went 98 matches with FC Dallas at 1.37 PPG, going 35W 34L 29D. Combining the two, he's now coached 154 matches for MLS teams in all comps with a 55W 57L 42D record, or 1.34 PPG.
Davy Arnaud still leads the club at 1.5 PPG, having won as Verde's final day manager in 2024 and losing his first match as interim manager. That could certainly dip if Arnaud stays on when Verde resumes play July 22, but we're inclined to believe the coaching search is on, and we'll see this new coach at the Austin FC open practice event on July 18.
Here are some of the possible directions the front office could go.
Wilfried Nancy
It's a dream for a reason: Nancy took a Montréal team that was ninth in the East in 2020 (led by Thierry Henry, and barely making the playoffs in a COVID-expanded format that also say 10th-place Miami get in), and got them to a Concacaf Champions Cup berth in 2021 by virtue of winning the Canadian Championship over Toronto, though CFM wasn't markedly better in the standings that first year. Then, he led the team to second in the East in 2022, getting to the Eastern Conference semis.
Still, over most of two seasons, that team went 38W 25L 16D, for 1.65 PPG.
Then, with Columbus — which the front office had to compensate Montréal for just to get him to come over — he got to MLS Cup and won it in 2023, won Leagues Cup and got to the Concacaf Champions Cup final in 2024, theoretically one teamwide bout of food poisoning from winning an unusual double.
In his time with Crew, up until taking a job with Celtic after a less-stellar but still solid 2025 season, Nancy went 71W 33L 32D for a 1.80 PPG average.
We're going to call his eight-match run at Celtic an aberration.
Jim Curtin
Though Curtin had some difficult early years in Philly, starting as a late-season replacement coach in 2014 and salvaging the season with a good regular-season run plus a U.S. Open Cup final appearance, before getting his new squad to a return USOC final in 2015 despite a shaky regular season.
Winning the big one was a Sisyphean task for Curtin — he returned to a third U.S. Open Cup final in 2018, losing that time to the Dynamo, and came so close to winning 2022's epic MLS Cup against LAFC that Jack Elliott was being prematurely tapped as player of the match before Gareth Bale and everything else happened.
By the time Curtin was dismissed at the end of the 2024 season — after failing to make that year's playoffs after six straight years in it — he'd racked up a 174W 138L 93D record, working out to about 1.52 PPG over the course of 405 matches. That's close to 12 34-match seasons of about 52 points per season, which is consistently solid.
Gio Savarese
Though he doesn't quite have the longevity that Curtin did — and few do — Savarese racked up an impressive record with the New York Cosmos of the NASL before moving over to the Timbers in 2017.
He lasted longer than any other Timbers coach before or after him — considering that Caleb Porter and Phil Neville coached there, perhaps it's not too surprising — and hasn't coached since exiting Portland in August 2023, which is perhaps concerning for reasons we've gotten into before.
While with Portland, Savarese was a playoff fixture, getting into the postseason four out of five times, and getting to MLS Cup in both 2018 (losing in Atlanta) and 2021 (losing to NYCFC at home).
His record? 93W 73L 50D, or a 1.52 PPG over 216 matches.
And since we're talking about Savarese, should we talk about another, more recently available Timbers head coach?
Phil Neville
You probably don't want Phil Neville to be Austin FC's head coach. I don't want Phil Neville to be Austin FC's head coach, and I share a first name with him. But here's something quite interesting my research led me to.
With Portland, over 95 matches, Neville amassed a 34W 37L 24 D record. That's not so great, but it is good enough for a 1.33 PPG record. And with Miami — and this is pre-Messi Miami, with Neville dismissed a month before Messi signed — Neville racked up a 36W 43L 11D record in 90 matches, for a nearly identical 1.32 PPG. In 185 total MLS matches managed, the 70W 80L 35D record works out, with rounding, to 1.32 PPG.
That's still better than either Wolff or Estévez managed with Verde.
And there's another recently-available coach you probably don't want who's also done better than Austin's two managers.
Bradley Carnell
Looking cynically at Carnell's two tours of MLS duty, first with St. Louis and then with Philly, the pattern seems similar: Make team run and press, team does well the first season, team appears ground to dust in the second season as the record plummets.
In St. Louis, his 22W 25L 15D record in all comps over 62 matches was largely bolstered by the team going 17W 12L 5D his debut season before a sophomore-season crash and dismissal by June 30. That was still good for a 1.31 PPG clip, but it was 1.65 PPG in the first MLS season.
Club president and general manager Diego Gigliani said upon his dismissal, to let you know how bad it got, "Nine games in a row with no wins, three points out a possible 27 points in the last nine games is bad form. So I think this feels like the moment where the decision had to be taken and at the same point we are encouraged by the thought that we have 14 games to go."
John Hackworth took over; St. Louis finished 2024 12th in the West on just 37 points.
In Philadelphia, Carnell fared better, winning a 2025 Supporters' Shield but then mounting a league-worst record in 2026 — a yipes-inducing 1W 10L 4D record — before being dismissed in May. In Philly, Carnell's 60-match total was 28W 21L 11D, for 1.58 PPG. Take those together, and the 122 matches gives him a 50W 46L 26D record, good for 1.44 PPG.
What it looks like
With all the data taken together, here's a crude Google Sheets-enabled rendering of how these coaches stack up.
What's striking here is that when looking at the combination of overall record and longevity, Verde's two former coaches are more in the Phil Neville realm than the others on this list.
It's, of course, possible that none of the names represented here take over. If Nancy and Curtin are proposed to and pass on the job, it could be a different candidate altogether – though if Verde does go the Savarese route, you're getting Curtin-like performance with approaching-Curtin longevity.
And if, weirdly, it happens to be Neville? From a PPG standpoint, you would at least know what to expect.
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.
Jayden Nelson, vying for a suddenly-vacant spot on Canada's World Cup roster, scored in stoppage time on Monday. He'll have one last chance on Friday to make an impression.
Jayden Nelson learned Friday that he'd missed the final cup for Canada's World Cup team. A teammate's unfortunate ACL injury puts Nelson back in the picture.
We continue on our goals-against tour in the first 15 matches of 2026 with some real doozies. Settle in; some of these are difficult (but we remind you, instructive) watches.
Austin FC, as you know, is on the search for a new head coach. As far as we know, former Inter Miami CF and Portland Timbers head coach Phil Neville is not on the list. But judging from one key metric, it wouldn't be that far of a departure from what Verde's had so far.
This requires getting into the history of Austin FC managers, with stats in all contests according to Transfermarkt.
First, Josh Wolff — named manager before Austin FC's first game, and notably before a sporting director was in place, racked up a 51W 67L 30D record over 148 matches while helming the club between its 2021 opener and the penultimate match in the 2024 season. That's just 1.24 points per game, and over a full 34-match season, that works out to be a 42-point clip, or just below the playoff line — and that's including 2022, in which Wolff led Verde to 56 points.
Nico Estévez fared slightly better, going 20W 23L 13D in his 56 matches with the club, for a 1.30 PPG, or just over 44 points per 34-match season.
(Estévez actually hurt his overall MLS coaching record by being at Austin; he went 98 matches with FC Dallas at 1.37 PPG, going 35W 34L 29D. Combining the two, he's now coached 154 matches for MLS teams in all comps with a 55W 57L 42D record, or 1.34 PPG.
Davy Arnaud still leads the club at 1.5 PPG, having won as Verde's final day manager in 2024 and losing his first match as interim manager. That could certainly dip if Arnaud stays on when Verde resumes play July 22, but we're inclined to believe the coaching search is on, and we'll see this new coach at the Austin FC open practice event on July 18.
Here are some of the possible directions the front office could go.
Wilfried Nancy
It's a dream for a reason: Nancy took a Montréal team that was ninth in the East in 2020 (led by Thierry Henry, and barely making the playoffs in a COVID-expanded format that also say 10th-place Miami get in), and got them to a Concacaf Champions Cup berth in 2021 by virtue of winning the Canadian Championship over Toronto, though CFM wasn't markedly better in the standings that first year. Then, he led the team to second in the East in 2022, getting to the Eastern Conference semis.
Still, over most of two seasons, that team went 38W 25L 16D, for 1.65 PPG.
Then, with Columbus — which the front office had to compensate Montréal for just to get him to come over — he got to MLS Cup and won it in 2023, won Leagues Cup and got to the Concacaf Champions Cup final in 2024, theoretically one teamwide bout of food poisoning from winning an unusual double.
In his time with Crew, up until taking a job with Celtic after a less-stellar but still solid 2025 season, Nancy went 71W 33L 32D for a 1.80 PPG average.
We're going to call his eight-match run at Celtic an aberration.
Jim Curtin
Though Curtin had some difficult early years in Philly, starting as a late-season replacement coach in 2014 and salvaging the season with a good regular-season run plus a U.S. Open Cup final appearance, before getting his new squad to a return USOC final in 2015 despite a shaky regular season.
Winning the big one was a Sisyphean task for Curtin — he returned to a third U.S. Open Cup final in 2018, losing that time to the Dynamo, and came so close to winning 2022's epic MLS Cup against LAFC that Jack Elliott was being prematurely tapped as player of the match before Gareth Bale and everything else happened.
By the time Curtin was dismissed at the end of the 2024 season — after failing to make that year's playoffs after six straight years in it — he'd racked up a 174W 138L 93D record, working out to about 1.52 PPG over the course of 405 matches. That's close to 12 34-match seasons of about 52 points per season, which is consistently solid.
Gio Savarese
Though he doesn't quite have the longevity that Curtin did — and few do — Savarese racked up an impressive record with the New York Cosmos of the NASL before moving over to the Timbers in 2017.
He lasted longer than any other Timbers coach before or after him — considering that Caleb Porter and Phil Neville coached there, perhaps it's not too surprising — and hasn't coached since exiting Portland in August 2023, which is perhaps concerning for reasons we've gotten into before.
While with Portland, Savarese was a playoff fixture, getting into the postseason four out of five times, and getting to MLS Cup in both 2018 (losing in Atlanta) and 2021 (losing to NYCFC at home).
His record? 93W 73L 50D, or a 1.52 PPG over 216 matches.
And since we're talking about Savarese, should we talk about another, more recently available Timbers head coach?
Phil Neville
You probably don't want Phil Neville to be Austin FC's head coach. I don't want Phil Neville to be Austin FC's head coach, and I share a first name with him. But here's something quite interesting my research led me to.
With Portland, over 95 matches, Neville amassed a 34W 37L 24 D record. That's not so great, but it is good enough for a 1.33 PPG record. And with Miami — and this is pre-Messi Miami, with Neville dismissed a month before Messi signed — Neville racked up a 36W 43L 11D record in 90 matches, for a nearly identical 1.32 PPG. In 185 total MLS matches managed, the 70W 80L 35D record works out, with rounding, to 1.32 PPG.
That's still better than either Wolff or Estévez managed with Verde.
And there's another recently-available coach you probably don't want who's also done better than Austin's two managers.
Bradley Carnell
Looking cynically at Carnell's two tours of MLS duty, first with St. Louis and then with Philly, the pattern seems similar: Make team run and press, team does well the first season, team appears ground to dust in the second season as the record plummets.
In St. Louis, his 22W 25L 15D record in all comps over 62 matches was largely bolstered by the team going 17W 12L 5D his debut season before a sophomore-season crash and dismissal by June 30. That was still good for a 1.31 PPG clip, but it was 1.65 PPG in the first MLS season.
Club president and general manager Diego Gigliani said upon his dismissal, to let you know how bad it got, "Nine games in a row with no wins, three points out a possible 27 points in the last nine games is bad form. So I think this feels like the moment where the decision had to be taken and at the same point we are encouraged by the thought that we have 14 games to go."
John Hackworth took over; St. Louis finished 2024 12th in the West on just 37 points.
In Philadelphia, Carnell fared better, winning a 2025 Supporters' Shield but then mounting a league-worst record in 2026 — a yipes-inducing 1W 10L 4D record — before being dismissed in May. In Philly, Carnell's 60-match total was 28W 21L 11D, for 1.58 PPG. Take those together, and the 122 matches gives him a 50W 46L 26D record, good for 1.44 PPG.
What it looks like
With all the data taken together, here's a crude Google Sheets-enabled rendering of how these coaches stack up.
What's striking here is that when looking at the combination of overall record and longevity, Verde's two former coaches are more in the Phil Neville realm than the others on this list.
It's, of course, possible that none of the names represented here take over. If Nancy and Curtin are proposed to and pass on the job, it could be a different candidate altogether – though if Verde does go the Savarese route, you're getting Curtin-like performance with approaching-Curtin longevity.
And if, weirdly, it happens to be Neville? From a PPG standpoint, you would at least know what to expect.
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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