Should Austin FC miss the 2026 playoffs — and that's looking increasingly likely following Wednesday night's 3-1 loss at LAFC — Denis Bouanga's second goal of the match, which Brandon Vázquez described after the match as a "fluke goal," will be emblematic of that effort falling short.
In the 67th minute, about a minute removed from the Vázquez equalizer that brought belief a road result was coming, Brad Stuver attempted to loft a ball long from his position in front of goal. Instead, the ball bounced off Son Heung-min, and dropped, of all places on the field it could have dropped, in front of an open Bouanga eight yards from goal. He's not one to miss in that situation, and indeed, did not.
"We're just trying to play a ball long, and Brad just mishits it, and it hits off the forward's back" Arnaud explained after the match. "These things happen, and then once we go down one, we're not in a position where tying — we don't feel like tying games is good enough. We we were trying to go for the three points. We made a sub that was aggressive. We had an extra attacking player in the game," referring to the sub several minutes before the exchange of goals, getting Myrto Uzuni in for Oleksandr Svatok.
"So once you do that, and you're chasing the game, and you need to go, we don't need a goal to tie it. We need a third goal to try and go and win it. So part of doing that is when you start to open yourself up ... and listen, if the game is one-one at that point, and we're still going for the second goal, I don't think we concede the same way that we do in transition. But it was based on the game state and what we needed at the moment that made us more susceptible to the transition."
The goal led us to slightly amend a season-long stat we've been tracking which hadn't reared its head since the Aug. 16 Dallas match, but has kept a team with newfound improved resiliency off the playoff pace for much of the season.
