By the end of Austin FC interim head coach Davy Arnaud's portion of the post-match Saturday press conference, following his team's 1-0 loss to the Colorado Rapids, it was clear he was not happy with what had transpired in the match.
"I don't want you to think that I was saying tonight was good," he said of the match in Commerce City, Colo.'s Dick's Sporting Goods Park, marking the start of the second half of the 2026 season.
"Tonight was not progress for us," he continued. "What I saw through the preseason matches, plus the first two league matches, that was good progress for us in terms of how we want to do things. Tonight was not progress. We didn't make steps in the right direction in terms of how we want to play. But we're going to get right back to it, and we're going to get right back on the horse, and we're going to believe in what we're doing."
What the team is doing — playing in a 5-2-3 formation with inverted wingbacks — appears a style that the team is committing to for at least the rest of the 2026 season, as Brandon Hines-Ike confirmed with his post-match comments about the preparations that have taken Verde from the midseason break to this point.
With the team through three matches with the new look, it has one point per match and a -2 goal differential to show for the work it's done — but Hines-Ike believes it could pay dividends down the road.
