Sebastián Druissi has played 1902 minutes this season, starting 22 of the 23 matches he’s appeared in following a start-of-season injury issue.
He hasn’t scored in the last 1047 of those.
And while the entirety of Austin FC’s season-long finishing woes doesn’t rest fully on him, Driussi’s struggles to score are emblematic of an issue that head coach Josh Wolff has returned to with regularity after each recent result bringing his team closer to playoff elimination.
Wolff has also talked about his team playing well in recent weeks, harkening back to its home win against NYCFC on July 6, save for the critical issue of finishing chances. But in that stretch of matches in which Wolff argues his team looked more cohesive and defended generally well — with the 1-0 loss to Vancouver on Aug. 31 as the lone negative outlier — the team hasn’t scored the requisite goals needed to win.
The eight-game stretch is decent enough from a defensive perspective. There’s only one shutout among the eight, but Verde only ceded three goals once in that stretch, giving up 11 goals total. In the four matches in which Austin only let in a single goal, including Saturday’s loss to Houston, Verde went 0-3-1, matching LAFC’s lone goal last Wednesday, and failing to score in the other three matches — all 1-0 losses.
Yes, in the eight matches that decided Verde’s playoff fortunes, starting back when Verde was at 1.36 points per match and still in a playoff place, it’s only managed seven goals, picking up five of 24 points when rivals like Minnesota and Dallas were gathering 13 and 14 points respectively in each of their most recent eight matches.
Minnesota is now seven points above Verde and hanging on to 9th place. While Austin dug itself a hole in the early part of the season, going 0-2-3 to start the season, you could credibly argue that this crucial segment of the season is when Austin loosened its tenuous grip on 9th place — and won’t recover it barring a miraculous turnaround coupled with two teams’ epic collapses.
Oh, and Austin’s PPG has dropped to 1.17 during the eight-match stretch. (Verde still needs five points from these last four matches to rise above 2023’s points total.)
At the risk of stating the obvious, more goals in these last eight matches — and throughout the season — would have helped.
