'Really doubtable': Grousing about a PK call and its resultant Copa Tejas disappointment

In the two previous matches played prior to Austin FC's 2-2 draw against Houston Dynamo FC on Saturday night, opponents were the beneficiaries of late penalty calls that allowed them to get to the spot and score penalty kicks against Brad Stuver. With the LA Galaxy and D.C. United, those PKs were awarded in stoppage time and merely allowed those teams to make losing scorelines a little better.

On Saturday night, however, the call on Robert Taylor — just two minutes after he entered the game, ostensibly fouling Pablo Ortiz at the edge of the 18-yard-box — was game-changing, allowing Jack McGlynn to get the Dynamo on the board with an 80th-minute gift goal and put them in position to get a crucial Copa Tejas draw.

And that pattern of calls against Verde from Professional Referee Organization (PRO) officials hasn't escaped head coach Nico Estévez's attention.

"We have three straight games that we've been given PK against [us] ... all three PKs [were] really, really doubtable," he observed. "Even today ... I mean, we have meetings with PRO and everything, and they talk about the PK has to be clear, doesn't have to be soft, and and then even the way that the player goes down. I mean, this player went down like three seconds after that, he felt something that he was minimal. They say it was minimal. He's facing backwards also, and then he is trying to get an advantage to put himself in the position. And it's obviously not a PK."

PRO had an explanation for both the penalty call and the lengthy Video Assistant Referee review process that contributed to nine minutes of stoppage time in which both teams futilely sought a match winner.

'We wanted to win'

And yet, once the ball hit the back of the net to halve the deficit, Estévez saw the match as changed — and irrevocably so, given that his team wasn't able to score.

"Until the PK, we've seen what we are seeing with the progression of the team," Estévez said. "How well we were playing, really compact on defense, but also with the ball, very dynamic, very lively, really dangerous the whole game, with good control, having the poise and the patience to to find the right moments to break, [with] the offense, the defending opponents' line."

He mentioned accumulating more than 2 goals' worth of xG without the benefit of getting a PK of their own — by MLS' count, 2.9 to Houston's 2.5 — and said, "We have to continue with that."

(By Catalina Bush's ASA-driven count, Austin actually got out-xGed, 1.86 to 1.51.)

"Obviously, we are not happy with the result," Estévez continued. "We wanted to win for us, for the fans and for the club, and to keep climbing in the table. But we know how difficult the league is ... what we have to learn is, after the decision that was against us with the PK, have a little bit more control."

'We just didn't keep up'

Both Stuver and Osman Bukari noted that as frustrated and angry as the team was following the match, they'd can't forget it — they'll need to review tape on this game and learn lessons to apply to the remainder of the season.

"We started well," Stuver said. "We played extremely well in the first half, we controlled the game, and then as the game went on, they made adjustments, we made adjustments, and we just didn't keep up with the flow of the game.

"And we have to realize that going into the final stretch of the year, at the end of games, we're going to get a little bit of chaos, and we need to match that intensity, and we need to match that kind of knowledge that it's not always going to be pretty. We needed to learn our lesson from the D.C. match, when we went into halftime up two, came out a little bit flat, and they scored a goal. We didn't learn our lesson."

'We were pushing hard'

As Estévez said, the team did display some encouraging attacking in the first half, with Bukari and Owen Wolff particularly dangerous in setting up goals — with Wolff sending in the corner kick that led to Ilie Sánchez's successful double-dip attempt to highlight an overall impressive match, and with Bukari working some on-ball wizardry before lofting an alley-oop pass for All-Star Guilherme Biro to nod home.

"We were pushing hard, we were attacking more than in the second half," Bukari observed. "In the second half, we didn't have enough chance to be in their box, but the first half, we were pushing hard, and everybody was always in their box to find their way."

While Bukari appears to be about as confident as he's been since becoming Verde, he only modestly puts his confidence at "70%" right now, noting that more goals will allow him to move that up.

After a resurgance of sorts for Myrto Uzuni over the last two games, he reverted to a relatively quiet outing on Saturday, with (per FotMob) 24 touches and just a single shot. Estévez had an explanation for why Uzuni didn't have a more impactful match.

"We didn't have good service today to provide in a way that he can make a difference," Estévez said. "I think some of the balls were too heavy, and then arrived to the goalkeeper too early. Some of the other balls weren't good there, and we have to keep working and making sure that we can provide those balls to him to score."

However, Uzuni's pedestrian 48 G+ rating (with a mean of 50) wasn't even close to the worst performance on the team. You can probably surmise who earned that.

That's not Oleksandr Svatok's 19 from the D.C. United match, which inspired our recent examination of goals added, but it's close.

As for newcomer Nicky Beloko, who didn't even make the roster on Saturday, Estévez said he's still rounding into match readiness, and anticipates a time soon when "he will be in the same condition to fight to be in the roster. That, right now, is difficult, because everyone is working hard."

Copa Tejas scenarios (if you care)

The draw also closed off the path to what's theoretically the easiest annual trophy for Verde to earn.

"Well, that sucks," Stuver said flatly after I walked him through the Copa Tejas math that puts Austin on the outs for the second straight season, confirming (along with Estévez during his press conference) that the trophy was something they'd talked about — though for Stuver, getting home wins and moving into better playoff position once clinching is his most pressing results-related concern.

With the draw, the best Austin can do is get two wins against Dallas, to equal the seven-point total Houston's amassed in its 2025 MLS matches involving Texas teams.

Verde would then lose on the first tiebreaker, which is points won in the matches involving the tied teams. With Houston beating Austin in both league matches this season — Austin's Open Cup win doesn't count — Houston wins that 4-1 (though it feels like 6-0).

There's one scenario in which Houston and Dallas tie on seven points, which would happen should Dallas beat Austin in one match and draw in the other. However, Houston wins what the Copa Tejas site says is the second tiebreaker — goal differential in matches between the tied teams. In the season opener, Amine Bassi put Houston up before Dallas came back to win 2-1, while Houston blanked Dallas 2-0 in the return leg.

Should Austin beat Dallas next week, though, Houston would clinch its first-ever Copa Tejas — with its two rivals still ahead on two trophies each.

It's still likely that Austin will finish above the other two Texas teams in the standings, where they still currently sit, but in this contest, the best they can do now is be a spoiler on behalf of a team that is more of a rival Sunday than they were on Saturday.

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