Despite losing its season finale 2-0 to Portland Timbers FC on Saturday night, Austin FC interim head coach Davy Arnaud — in his last match in that role — talked about the body of work he and his players accomplished following his summer takeover of the team.
"We went into the summer with the coaching staff before the players came back in," he shared. "We were deciding about how we wanted to play based on the players that we had, who's available. based on their qualities, and we decided something that was going to work based on the players. We had an idea and a plan, and I thought you saw that from the start to the finish ... tonight was, even though we lose the game, you see a great example of what we built over the course of five months.
"We were consistent in what we were trying to do. We tried to give a clear idea of how we wanted to play with roles and responsibilities," he added. "My biggest takeaway is that if you believe in it and you stick to it, even when things aren't going well, even if results aren't going well, even if it doesn't go within well within the course of a game, if you stick to it and you believe in it, the players will grow in it.
"I think we saw the players grow in it in a really good way, and I think tonight is the culmination of that. I said before the game, this is sports, this is soccer. You can have good performances and lose games. You can have bad performances and lose games. The most important thing to me tonight was that we came on the field and we were us, and we stuck to it, and we were brave," he said, adding that his players weren't lacking in effort on Saturday despite the outcome.
Arnaud was also somewhat forward looking in his comments Saturday, operating under the assumption he'll resume his role as assistant coach to help build the team with incoming head coach Jim Curtin — and the players who remain after the annual end-of-season roster shedding, which could officially begin tomorrow.
