'We had our opportunities': Was the loss at Seattle less thorough than the scoreline tells us?
Nico Estévez was encouraged by what he saw in the second half last night ... how about you?
To hear Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez tell it, following his team's 2-0 loss at Seattle on Saturday night, all they needed was a single goal to mount a result-generating comeback.
"When you play against teams that you know are very balanced, the difference is made when you can score a goal," Estévez said after the match. "You know, I think we had our opportunities and we didn't. I'm pretty sure if we [get the] score [to] 2-1, we will have the opportunity, as the game was going on, to tie the game. It's a weird feeling, because we did a lot of good things against a really good team, but we didn't get anything."
Indeed, in what is perhaps more a stat to lead you to question rather than trust xG, the American Soccer Analysis model has Austin FC winning the vaunted xG battle, and with Jesus Ferreira's goal right before halftime being the only good xG value chance the Sounders got all night.
MLS' numbers incidentally told a different story, with the Sounders besting Verde 2.1 to 1.8 in xG, with the Ferreira chance being near automatic at 0.93 to amass nearly half their numeric chance creation.
Perhaps the eye test told you something different last night?
'I think we responded really well'
Despite going down right before halftime on Ferreira's goal — with the former FC Dallas star being same scourge, different shirt — Estévez expressed positivity about his team's post-halftime performance.
"I think we responded really well in the second half," he assessed. "At the beginning, we had control of the game. We're winning balls. We were having crosses. We also had a lot of set pieces, and then again, with a mistake with the press, in a miscommunication on who had to release and who had to go, we left Svatok in a one-v-one situation, something that we worked this week on those situations, but unfortunately we couldn't resolve," before reiterating his endorsement of the response.
Reflecting something Estévez specifically said about seizing momentum in the second half, Verde (here depicted in black, because the hosts also use green as a primary color) did fare better in the momentum chart in the second half — albeit after the Sounders seized the 2-0 lead via Danny Musovski beating Oleksandr Svatok one-on-one and placing his shot where Brad Stuver (and, indeed, no goalkeeper in the world) could get to it.
Though Seattle grabbed the lead at the end of a first half in which Austin managed just one shot on target – not counting, of course, Guilherme Biro nearly Tareking a rebounded Musovski shot past Stuver in the 20th minute — Verde had largely contained the Sounders' offense before that momentary collapse.
Unfortunately, we've seen this movie before: Verde puts up a strong defensive effort, contains most threats, but then a defensive lapse or two combined with an inability to score — they now have just 15 goals in 20 matches this season — leads to a loss.
'Some problems at times'
Challenged about the first goal in both English (by me) and Spanish during his portion of the press conference, Estévez admitted, "Hemos tenido en algunos momentos algunos problemas" ("We have had some problems at times"), due to the Sounders being able to beat Austin's pressing efforts and getting a player free, creating mismatches that led to both successful scoring opportunities.
Estévez talked about, in the moments that the Sounders took advantage, of being mindful of their speed and of spacing so as to not be susceptible to the mismatches and overloads that they created on the two goals.
But he also talked more holistically about the extended break his players got to be on thanks to the international break — a break the Sounders played through thanks to their Club World Cup commitments.
"There is a lot of more to do in that play, from a lot of players, and we have to work," Estévez said about this first goal, where Biro in particular got caught out of position, leaving Ferreira free on the back post to finish. "I take responsibility on on that, because my job is to prepare these players to solve those situations ... sometimes when you have a break, you lose a little bit of focus. And when we were having a good run of results, we got this break that helped us a little bit. And we now know that if we are not 100% and we are not focused in some areas, the opponent can punish you."
What happens next?
On Saturday, Verde will host an LAFC team that, like Seattle, crashed out of the Club World Cup in the group stages. In their earlier meeting this year, Biro scored the lone early goal in a surprise 1-0 win for Verde; that win is arguably their best road result of the year to date.
If the playoffs started today, Austin would travel to Colorado for a one-match play-in game for the right to face San Diego in a best-of-three series. As it stands right now, I could see Austin getting a win — having beat the Rapids in Commerce City just last month — but then falling to the surprisingly good expansion side in either two or three matches. (Conceivably, Austin could muster a home win, but given the recent performance at San Diego, I believe getting an away win there is beyond their grasp as currently constituted.
As currently constituted is key — the summer transfer window opens in less than four weeks, and new players could patch perceived holes and make the difference between ekeing into the playoffs and more resolutely punching a ticket. Currently Austin's four points from fifth and five points from 11th or 12th, and it's conceivable that level of volatility could continue right up to Decision Day.
And though Saturday's match was a loss, it's also one of the toughest matches that was remaining in what is a remarkably easy late-season stretch. Now with the Seattle match in the rearview, the remaining opponents in front of Austin ratchet down from an average of 1.121 PPG to 1.09 PPG.
(And that gets even lower after next Saturday, with LAFC at 1.63 PPG when we did the calculations, down to 1.05 PPG.)
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. You can comment here if you’re a subscriber, or reach out via Bluesky.
To hear Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez tell it, following his team's 2-0 loss at Seattle on Saturday night, all they needed was a single goal to mount a result-generating comeback.
"When you play against teams that you know are very balanced, the difference is made when you can score a goal," Estévez said after the match. "You know, I think we had our opportunities and we didn't. I'm pretty sure if we [get the] score [to] 2-1, we will have the opportunity, as the game was going on, to tie the game. It's a weird feeling, because we did a lot of good things against a really good team, but we didn't get anything."
Indeed, in what is perhaps more a stat to lead you to question rather than trust xG, the American Soccer Analysis model has Austin FC winning the vaunted xG battle, and with Jesus Ferreira's goal right before halftime being the only good xG value chance the Sounders got all night.
MLS' numbers incidentally told a different story, with the Sounders besting Verde 2.1 to 1.8 in xG, with the Ferreira chance being near automatic at 0.93 to amass nearly half their numeric chance creation.
Perhaps the eye test told you something different last night?
'I think we responded really well'
Despite going down right before halftime on Ferreira's goal — with the former FC Dallas star being same scourge, different shirt — Estévez expressed positivity about his team's post-halftime performance.
"I think we responded really well in the second half," he assessed. "At the beginning, we had control of the game. We're winning balls. We were having crosses. We also had a lot of set pieces, and then again, with a mistake with the press, in a miscommunication on who had to release and who had to go, we left Svatok in a one-v-one situation, something that we worked this week on those situations, but unfortunately we couldn't resolve," before reiterating his endorsement of the response.
Reflecting something Estévez specifically said about seizing momentum in the second half, Verde (here depicted in black, because the hosts also use green as a primary color) did fare better in the momentum chart in the second half — albeit after the Sounders seized the 2-0 lead via Danny Musovski beating Oleksandr Svatok one-on-one and placing his shot where Brad Stuver (and, indeed, no goalkeeper in the world) could get to it.
Though Seattle grabbed the lead at the end of a first half in which Austin managed just one shot on target – not counting, of course, Guilherme Biro nearly Tareking a rebounded Musovski shot past Stuver in the 20th minute — Verde had largely contained the Sounders' offense before that momentary collapse.
Unfortunately, we've seen this movie before: Verde puts up a strong defensive effort, contains most threats, but then a defensive lapse or two combined with an inability to score — they now have just 15 goals in 20 matches this season — leads to a loss.
'Some problems at times'
Challenged about the first goal in both English (by me) and Spanish during his portion of the press conference, Estévez admitted, "Hemos tenido en algunos momentos algunos problemas" ("We have had some problems at times"), due to the Sounders being able to beat Austin's pressing efforts and getting a player free, creating mismatches that led to both successful scoring opportunities.
Estévez talked about, in the moments that the Sounders took advantage, of being mindful of their speed and of spacing so as to not be susceptible to the mismatches and overloads that they created on the two goals.
But he also talked more holistically about the extended break his players got to be on thanks to the international break — a break the Sounders played through thanks to their Club World Cup commitments.
"There is a lot of more to do in that play, from a lot of players, and we have to work," Estévez said about this first goal, where Biro in particular got caught out of position, leaving Ferreira free on the back post to finish. "I take responsibility on on that, because my job is to prepare these players to solve those situations ... sometimes when you have a break, you lose a little bit of focus. And when we were having a good run of results, we got this break that helped us a little bit. And we now know that if we are not 100% and we are not focused in some areas, the opponent can punish you."
What happens next?
On Saturday, Verde will host an LAFC team that, like Seattle, crashed out of the Club World Cup in the group stages. In their earlier meeting this year, Biro scored the lone early goal in a surprise 1-0 win for Verde; that win is arguably their best road result of the year to date.
If the playoffs started today, Austin would travel to Colorado for a one-match play-in game for the right to face San Diego in a best-of-three series. As it stands right now, I could see Austin getting a win — having beat the Rapids in Commerce City just last month — but then falling to the surprisingly good expansion side in either two or three matches. (Conceivably, Austin could muster a home win, but given the recent performance at San Diego, I believe getting an away win there is beyond their grasp as currently constituted.
As currently constituted is key — the summer transfer window opens in less than four weeks, and new players could patch perceived holes and make the difference between ekeing into the playoffs and more resolutely punching a ticket. Currently Austin's four points from fifth and five points from 11th or 12th, and it's conceivable that level of volatility could continue right up to Decision Day.
And though Saturday's match was a loss, it's also one of the toughest matches that was remaining in what is a remarkably easy late-season stretch. Now with the Seattle match in the rearview, the remaining opponents in front of Austin ratchet down from an average of 1.121 PPG to 1.09 PPG.
(And that gets even lower after next Saturday, with LAFC at 1.63 PPG when we did the calculations, down to 1.05 PPG.)
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. You can comment here if you’re a subscriber, or reach out via Bluesky.
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