Is it working after all?
It was just one night — and a Leagues Cup competition night at that — but Austin FC's 2-0 win over Club Tijuana on Thursday showed interim head coach Davy Arnaud's 5-2-3 inverted wingback system of play at its most effective since getting its public rollout 16 days ago.
Consider, for starters, that both goals were scored by inverted wingbacks – Joseph Rosales early in the match, led via a Mytro Uzuni diagonal switch, and Jon Gallagher right before halftime, benefiting from an Ervin Torres pass served into his path by a Tijuana defender trying to deal with the danger.
Arnaud, while happy, indicated that the work to adopt the new system isn't yet done.
"We're continuing to see progress," he said. "I thought tonight was another good step against a good team. They make it really tough. They defend deep at times with a line of six. So it's tough to break down. But, overall, I think we saw good progress in some of the things that we're working on. I thought we were better with the ball. I thought we were better on the ball back to Brad in our buildup from goalkeeper phase. It's something we talked about, and I thought we did a good job tonight, so yeah, we're seeing good progress. But the final version ... we're still working toward that, and we'll continue to do that."
Tijuana coach Sebastián "Loco" Abreu, responding to my question during his turn at the mike post-match, said the team was prepared for the new-look Austin and fared better than the result showed.
