'I'm very proud of the team today, because we responded': Nico Estévez defends the arguably indefensible

From the jump on Saturday night, Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez faced perhaps the most challenging slate of post-match questions he's faced in his time with the club.

In the wake of a 3-0 home loss to Minnesota United, dropping Austin FC from third to sixth in the Western Conference (and just one point above the playoff line), Estévez praised his players for not folding after going down following a bizarre own goal midway through the first half, defending what many disappointed fans would characterize as an indefensible performance from a team with playoff aspirations following a pair of ambitious offseason signings – aiming to frame the loss as one that can help a still-evolving team learn and grow.

"I'm very proud of the team today, because we responded," he assessed, answering Austin Chronicle columnist Eric Goodman's question about the team's apparent inability to come back from deficits this season. "We didn't lose our minds. We created chances every single time. Before, with it 0-0, with 1-0, we had a couple of situations to score. And then with the 2-0, we have a couple of situations to score in the second half, we completely dominated the game, and we had chances to score.

"But right now, the goals are not coming our way, but [they] will come," he added. "Now, it's painful. It's really, really painful, because it's not a game that you deserve to lose in the way that you lose, because the opponent didn't do too much. But we have to accept that this sport's sometimes cruel, and we're having that moment of cruelty against us."

Within that answer, he mentioned more than doubling up the visitors on total xG, which while technically true, belies the fact that Minnesota was quite efficient with its chances and Austin was wasteful with its chances. It also overlooks that Austin got considerably fewer shots on target (losing that metric 8-3), with both teams lacking quality chance generation throughout the night.

(As you can see from the chart below, the two goals the Loons scored that weren't own goals came off technically poor xG chances per American Soccer Analysis' scale, and I'm surmising based on the eye test that the own goal would also register as a poor chance had it not clipped Sánchez' heel en route to Stuver's uncharacteristic failure to trap a routine soft shot.)

In the somewhat rambling answer to Goodman's follow-up question about how the performance lined up with the team's standards, Estévez clarified, "I never said I was proud of the performance. I never said that. I'm proud of the guys ... You know how hard it is for these guys to be right now there. You know how hard it is that they gave everything that they could. I don't think you guys [are] put in their position. It's painful. And they had the chances they create. They dominated an opponent that came here, that is good, that made the playoffs [last year]. We didn't make the playoffs.

"The standards of this club are high, but the reality right now is that we are not ready," he added. "It's a process, and either we go all together in this or we just want to kill ourselves. And this is not the moment to blame anyone. It's not the moment to separate the guys. It's the moment to be together. We all made mistakes. They put a lot of effort there. They did more than their opponent to score more goals. And for whatever reason, this is sport. This is why this sport is so difficult. It's unpredictable."

There was more to this answer, including him saying, "I'm proud, because they work so hard during the week to prepare this game. They came back after this dreadful plight, and they tried and they tried, and sometimes things are not going your way, but we just have to keep going again and again and again. If things are going well, we go again. If things are not going well, we go again. And that's it. But I think if we only focus on the result and the numbers. I think we all can have the type of judgment of the situation that doesn't go with the reality of what we saw today."

Facing an additional concern

Estévez contrasted this performance with one producing similar quotes and observations — Verde's 5-1 loss at Vancouver on April 12 – yet that disastrous match launched what I'm seeing as an even more concerning trend than the team only mustering seven goals through this nearly a third of the 2025 season – which is next to last in the league, attributable in large part to a trio of designated players in Mytro Uzuni, Brandon Vázquez, and Osman Bukari who are (by the typical metrics and the eye test) underperforming.

Austin FC has now lost three of its last four matches by a combined score of 10-1. It's a contrast from a team with a stout defense to start the season, letting in just three goals in its first seven matches en route to a 4-2-1 record including two impressive (certainly compared to what we've seen lately) road wins.

When I asked about the recent losses and their concerning margins, he went into an encapsulation of the three goals against them in this recent match rather than broader diagnostics about the divide between the first seven matches and these last four.

"The first goal is a disgrace," he said of what was credited as an Ilie Sánchez own goal, but what goalkeeper Brad Stuver put his hand up for as his mistake. "The opponent didn't do much, as I said ... the first goal is a mistake that we had, and you usually don't have those mistakes. The second goal is coming from a set piece, and they're a very strong team, and it's coming from recirculation, and we have to be better there.

"And the third goal is just ... it's another mistake that we had, and you consider, it's not because we weren't bad on defense. I think when we were defending, they didn't do much, and we won the ball. It was more in transition moments, in moments where we didn't have control of the situation, and it's where they are a good team, and we kind of suffer [in] some of their transitions, and we have to learn from that, because we will play them soon again."

It's not just that Minnesota looms on the schedule May 24, when Austin travels to the Twin Cities as part of a seven league match May. In their next three matches, Verde's opponents have combined for 49 goals in 32 matches, and in Cincinnati and Vancouver, will face what is currently the No. 1 and No. 4 teams in the Supporters' Shield race.

Estévez also claimed that the Loons' shift from their typical 5-3-2 formation to a 5-4-1 required some adjustment. But to hear Stuver tell it, the low-possession, transition-dependent style Minnesota came with – incidentally, a style Austin's employed and been comparatively effective with this year – was exactly what they were prepared to expect.

"When you look at tonight, it was all about transition and it was all about long balls over the top," Stuver said. "When you look at Houston, it was a little bit different. So it's just dealing with the team that we have in front of us, knowing the strengths that they have, and we went into this game knowing that they want to hit us in transition, want to hit us with long balls, so the defense knew what we were up against ... One mistake from me that leads to the first goal. It changes the whole dynamics of the game.

"We knew that we were going to have a lot of the ball," he assessed. "We knew that they were going to play long. We knew that they were going to have pace and power up front. We had a plan in place to stop it. But, like I said, when you make a mistake and you give up a goal, then things have to change, and we are chasing the game a little bit more, so our tactics change a little bit to get that goal back. So that's on me, and that's not on anybody else or the game plan that starts, because when you go down 1-0, you have to change things to get back in the game."

And yet, as you can tell from Saturday night's passing maps, neither team looked particularly connected — even though Verde dominated in field tilt for the first time this season, securing 64% of the match's final third passes.

(And yes, that's Sánchez and Vázquez occupying the same average position on the field, and a heat map showing the inverse of some early defense-first victories that Verde secured.)

Perspective from the captain

On a night on which at least one previous Verde captain might have slipped out of the locker room without facing press questions, Sánchez stepped up for those media members who went directly to the locker room rather than staying in the briefing room for what turned out to be 25 minutes of Estévez holding court.

"I think we lacked playing with urgency," Sánchez assessed, noting that the game state led them to take more risks, shifting from the mindset in which Verde "scores the first and from there grows."

By contrast, he noted, "Minnesota came to play its game," and echoed his coach in determining that there's more work to do in training in the coming weeks to halt the current momentum slide.

"They fight for each other, on and off the field, with and without the ball," he noted of his current teammates, reflecting on the time when he was with LAFC sizing them up as opponents. "We had very tough games that we played here against them and pretty much the core group of the players were similar to the ones we have this year, so we cannot lose that. They had it for pretty much since the beginning. They built that with a lot of effort and a lot of commitment from everyone here."

Similarly, Estévez struck a similar tone of hope and optimism, seeking to put the loss in perspective, while pointing out that teams have the potential to learn more from losses like Saturday's than from wins.

“I am an optimist, a person who believes everything in life happens for a reason, and this defeat happened for a reason as did the one in Houston, and I believe that team [will] forge themselves suffering and experiencing the worst.”

What comes next

For Austin FC, expect a quick turnaround leading into Wednesday's initial U.S. Open Cup match at home against El Paso Locomotive, including a press conference tentatively scheduled for Tuesday to preview that match as well as Saturday's upcoming road trip to Cincinnati.

For Verde All Day, I've hit the 2000-word mark in this article on the post-match press conference and only feel like I'm scratching the surface ... so, in some form, be it a follow-up article or a somewhat-of-an-emergency Emergency Podcast, expect a Part Two before fans gather in Q2 Stadium once again.

(In his parting words to media members on Saturday night, Sánchez looped in the Austin FC press corps as "part of the process" in this team finding its way. While I don't feel quite the level of frustration that some fans exhibited post-match, I do see a spectrum of outcomes in the coming weeks, including ones that could trend very badly. Let's just say we're going to learn a lot about this team by the end of May.)

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