The price of points and goals, and the value of Owen Wolff
How much does a goal cost? If you're looking at salaries vs. production, it can be the cost of a car or the cost of a house.
For the past couple of years, I've marveled at the big numbers that can result when you take a designated player on a huge salary who's not producing — I believe Emiliano Rigoni sent me down this path – and calculate dollars per goal based on the player's salary and output.
I was then thrilled, as you imagined I might be if you ran across this as well, that the team at Hudson River Blue (which covers NYCFC) came up with a Points Per Million formula.
They went one further than I did ... taking the points amassed by each team over the 2025 season and calculating how much each team "spent" per point won, based on the team's total salary.
While MLS does have a salary cap, the way that designated player and U22 salaries figure into the salary cap, versus how much a team actually shells out for a player, results in the ranges that HRB's work revealed — so you can have an Inter Miami with Lionel Messi paying $46,836,635 in total team salary, versus a CF Montréal decidedly on the other end of the spectrum, paying $11,993,946.
The Philadelphia Union, which laid out a relatively economical $13,365,549, won the 2025 Supporters' Shield with 66 points, and topped the points per million standings — unsurprisingly — with 4.94 points per million.
All teams in the top 12 — including Austin FC, at No. 9 — made the playoffs.
Austin FC's at No. 9 on the list (Hudson River Blue)
You have to get to No. 13, where Houston sits at 2.76 points per million with its low salary and modest finish, to get to a non-playoff team. You're probably not surprised with the bottom three, as big-spending Toronto FC, Atlanta United, and LA Galaxy had less-than-stellar years despite paying for players.
But Inter Miami, third in the East and just a point behind the Shield winners, is No. 27, getting 65 points but with a salary budget large enough to come in at 1.33 points per million.
In the meantime, the Vancouver Whitecaps, spending just over a third of that, finished with just two fewer points (and might have done three points better if not getting a red card against an especially motivated FC Dallas in their final game).
The lesson from this, of course, is teams getting value from their designated players and being smart about outlays up and down the roster can succeed ... and, conversely, paying big for designated players that don't produce or don't function well on a dysfunctional team (looking at you, Atlanta United) can be disastrous in the table and in public perception.
It's one thing for your team to be led in scoring by Prince Owusu (13 goals, $982,500) and Dante Sealy (9 goals, $122,022); it's quite another to bring in Emmanuel Latte Lath (scoring seven goals and making $4,030,546 after coming in on a massive transfer fee).
Let's talk goals
For Austin FC, at a little more than $15 million, three players — DPs Brandon Vázquez, Myrto Uzuni, and Osman Bukari — command a combined $7,276,778. If you're reducing salaries to goals produced, you'd expect those top three players to combine for nearly half of your total goals (or, to be precise, 47.4%).
Given Austin's paltry 37 goals – 35 if you don't count own goals — the three should have combined for 16.6 goals. They came close to that, combining for 14 goals.
And that's good ... except that preseason optimism around the trio led to projections of a combined 30 goals; instead, Verde spent the first half of the season flirting with a record for the lowest goal output of any MLS team playing a 34-game season in league history, Vázquez scored five goals in 19 league appearances before suffering a season-ending knee injury, and Uzuni scored just one goal in his first 17 league appearances before locking in with five in his final 10.
Did anyone anticipate that Owen Wolff would be the team's leading goalscorer, let alone be responsible for 20% of the goals that Austin FC players scored in 2025? Yet there he is, with seven of the 35 goals that Verde mustered this season, which by the way, is a total amounting to a little more than one a game.
As an aside, how dire was Austin's scoring this year? If own goals were a player — let's call him Owen Goal — he'd be tied with Diego Rubio on the roster, with only five players scoring more goals.
But let's celebrate the other Owen — who, with seven goals and only costing the front office $221,600 in salary — who was far and away the best goalscoring value on the team this year.
That's organized by goals and then assists; you see how it's Owen and the DPs and then a fairly sharp dropoff after that, although Rubio and Dani Pereira equaled Vázquez in goal contributions (getting 1607 minutes before his injury, compared to 937 for Rubio and 2071 for Pereira).
Now look at the chart organized by dollars per goal.
For about the price of a new Toyota Camry, you can have an Owen Wolff goal, with each costing the club $31,657. Though there's conflicting data on the median home price in Austin, it's in the Osman Bukari goal to Žan Kolmanič goal range, though the median listing price is still around an Ilie Sanchez goal.
The average home value in the Mueller neighborhood is about a 2025 Brandon Vázquez goal, though to get to the average home price to increase your likelihood of running into me at the Mueller H-E-B, you'd need to add a Guilherme Biro goal, which is also the price of a new Audi A8. (Note that I live in a neighborhood near Mueller.)
That's to put the goal values in terms relevant to you, and if you can get players scoring goals for you that will cost your front office cars rather than houses, that will help. DP strikers are typically going to be the most expensive signings in MLS, and front offices know that and plan for that.
But if your DP striker scores enough goals, they work out to be not as much per goal. For instance, in 2025, Nashville SC's Sam Surridge made $3,182,639, but he also scored 24 goals, meaning his team spent (in this reductive way of looking at things) $132,610 per goal, which, in Austin FC terms, is a little more than a CJ Fodrey goal, except there are 23 more of them.
Denis Bouanga's 24 goals are a little more per goal, with the $3,709,500 LAFC is paying him in 2025, but that's just $154,562.50 per goal, and when you consider his nine assists, that's $112,409 a goal contribution.
Looking at the goals-to-salary numbers, here's what it looks like on a scatter plot chart.
Forgetting for a moment where Surridge's place on the chart would be (around where his salary is several paragraphs above the chart), it's clear that Wolff and Biro are the biggest value contributors, but between them, they're barely to double-digit goals.
When you look at goal contributions, it's even more pronounced.
Wolff is down to $14,773 per goal contribution, which is about what you'd have to put down for a 2018 Toyota Camry. Rubio's next on the list, and while none of the DPs are generating Bouanga-level value, Bukari comes close and is the best of the DPs — though more than 10 goal contributions would be nice.
But Uzuni, with one less goal contribution, still has each of his goal contributions costing nearly $100,000 more than one of Bukari's.
And then, after that, you have to remind yourself that the chart's sweeping up players that you likely don't expect more than an occassional goal from.
But then, if you're like me, you marvel at how few goals Verde scored in 2025, which brings us back full circle to the points per million data.
Teams with similar payrolls to Austin FC managed many more goals. The Union scored 57, led by Tai Baribo's 16. The Whitecaps scored 66, led by Brian White's 16. Minnesota scored 56, although 10 came from the now-departed Tani Oluwaseyi and nine came from the now-injured Kelvin Yeboah, which drops the Loons to Austin FC-level scoring for a playoff series against Seattle.
Nico Estévez did well to get this team to the playoffs this year, and the points per million numbers indicate it happened without big bucks spent on talent — even woith the outlay for the team's two most expensive players next season.
But for 2026, there's one of two directions Austin FC could aspire to go — either getting more out of a payroll that is comparatively low, or somehow adding to the payroll to amass more fortune-changing talent. Knowing what we know about the roster, I'd expect it to tip toward the first approach, with the awareness that scoring more goals is a must — regardless of how much they cost.
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. For more coverage, check out Emergency Podcast! (an Austin FC Podcast) wherever you get your podcasts.
Austin FC has faced LAFC twice this season, but not the LAFC with Son Heung-min on it. Head coach Nico Estévez gave some indication as to how his team will try to contain him.
Verde finished the season with 37 goals and a -8 goal differential. But they got wins when they needed them — including a key win over San Jose preceding this rematch loss.
In a season finale of no consequence to Austin's playoff fortunes, Owen Wolff got the visitors the early lead. Then, the hosts, desperate to make the playoffs, scored two goals in four minutes.
For the past couple of years, I've marveled at the big numbers that can result when you take a designated player on a huge salary who's not producing — I believe Emiliano Rigoni sent me down this path – and calculate dollars per goal based on the player's salary and output.
I was then thrilled, as you imagined I might be if you ran across this as well, that the team at Hudson River Blue (which covers NYCFC) came up with a Points Per Million formula.
They went one further than I did ... taking the points amassed by each team over the 2025 season and calculating how much each team "spent" per point won, based on the team's total salary.
While MLS does have a salary cap, the way that designated player and U22 salaries figure into the salary cap, versus how much a team actually shells out for a player, results in the ranges that HRB's work revealed — so you can have an Inter Miami with Lionel Messi paying $46,836,635 in total team salary, versus a CF Montréal decidedly on the other end of the spectrum, paying $11,993,946.
The Philadelphia Union, which laid out a relatively economical $13,365,549, won the 2025 Supporters' Shield with 66 points, and topped the points per million standings — unsurprisingly — with 4.94 points per million.
All teams in the top 12 — including Austin FC, at No. 9 — made the playoffs.
You have to get to No. 13, where Houston sits at 2.76 points per million with its low salary and modest finish, to get to a non-playoff team. You're probably not surprised with the bottom three, as big-spending Toronto FC, Atlanta United, and LA Galaxy had less-than-stellar years despite paying for players.
But Inter Miami, third in the East and just a point behind the Shield winners, is No. 27, getting 65 points but with a salary budget large enough to come in at 1.33 points per million.
In the meantime, the Vancouver Whitecaps, spending just over a third of that, finished with just two fewer points (and might have done three points better if not getting a red card against an especially motivated FC Dallas in their final game).
The lesson from this, of course, is teams getting value from their designated players and being smart about outlays up and down the roster can succeed ... and, conversely, paying big for designated players that don't produce or don't function well on a dysfunctional team (looking at you, Atlanta United) can be disastrous in the table and in public perception.
It's one thing for your team to be led in scoring by Prince Owusu (13 goals, $982,500) and Dante Sealy (9 goals, $122,022); it's quite another to bring in Emmanuel Latte Lath (scoring seven goals and making $4,030,546 after coming in on a massive transfer fee).
Let's talk goals
For Austin FC, at a little more than $15 million, three players — DPs Brandon Vázquez, Myrto Uzuni, and Osman Bukari — command a combined $7,276,778. If you're reducing salaries to goals produced, you'd expect those top three players to combine for nearly half of your total goals (or, to be precise, 47.4%).
Given Austin's paltry 37 goals – 35 if you don't count own goals — the three should have combined for 16.6 goals. They came close to that, combining for 14 goals.
And that's good ... except that preseason optimism around the trio led to projections of a combined 30 goals; instead, Verde spent the first half of the season flirting with a record for the lowest goal output of any MLS team playing a 34-game season in league history, Vázquez scored five goals in 19 league appearances before suffering a season-ending knee injury, and Uzuni scored just one goal in his first 17 league appearances before locking in with five in his final 10.
Did anyone anticipate that Owen Wolff would be the team's leading goalscorer, let alone be responsible for 20% of the goals that Austin FC players scored in 2025? Yet there he is, with seven of the 35 goals that Verde mustered this season, which by the way, is a total amounting to a little more than one a game.
As an aside, how dire was Austin's scoring this year? If own goals were a player — let's call him Owen Goal — he'd be tied with Diego Rubio on the roster, with only five players scoring more goals.
But let's celebrate the other Owen — who, with seven goals and only costing the front office $221,600 in salary — who was far and away the best goalscoring value on the team this year.
That's organized by goals and then assists; you see how it's Owen and the DPs and then a fairly sharp dropoff after that, although Rubio and Dani Pereira equaled Vázquez in goal contributions (getting 1607 minutes before his injury, compared to 937 for Rubio and 2071 for Pereira).
Now look at the chart organized by dollars per goal.
For about the price of a new Toyota Camry, you can have an Owen Wolff goal, with each costing the club $31,657. Though there's conflicting data on the median home price in Austin, it's in the Osman Bukari goal to Žan Kolmanič goal range, though the median listing price is still around an Ilie Sanchez goal.
The average home value in the Mueller neighborhood is about a 2025 Brandon Vázquez goal, though to get to the average home price to increase your likelihood of running into me at the Mueller H-E-B, you'd need to add a Guilherme Biro goal, which is also the price of a new Audi A8. (Note that I live in a neighborhood near Mueller.)
That's to put the goal values in terms relevant to you, and if you can get players scoring goals for you that will cost your front office cars rather than houses, that will help. DP strikers are typically going to be the most expensive signings in MLS, and front offices know that and plan for that.
But if your DP striker scores enough goals, they work out to be not as much per goal. For instance, in 2025, Nashville SC's Sam Surridge made $3,182,639, but he also scored 24 goals, meaning his team spent (in this reductive way of looking at things) $132,610 per goal, which, in Austin FC terms, is a little more than a CJ Fodrey goal, except there are 23 more of them.
Denis Bouanga's 24 goals are a little more per goal, with the $3,709,500 LAFC is paying him in 2025, but that's just $154,562.50 per goal, and when you consider his nine assists, that's $112,409 a goal contribution.
Looking at the goals-to-salary numbers, here's what it looks like on a scatter plot chart.
Forgetting for a moment where Surridge's place on the chart would be (around where his salary is several paragraphs above the chart), it's clear that Wolff and Biro are the biggest value contributors, but between them, they're barely to double-digit goals.
When you look at goal contributions, it's even more pronounced.
Wolff is down to $14,773 per goal contribution, which is about what you'd have to put down for a 2018 Toyota Camry. Rubio's next on the list, and while none of the DPs are generating Bouanga-level value, Bukari comes close and is the best of the DPs — though more than 10 goal contributions would be nice.
But Uzuni, with one less goal contribution, still has each of his goal contributions costing nearly $100,000 more than one of Bukari's.
And then, after that, you have to remind yourself that the chart's sweeping up players that you likely don't expect more than an occassional goal from.
But then, if you're like me, you marvel at how few goals Verde scored in 2025, which brings us back full circle to the points per million data.
Teams with similar payrolls to Austin FC managed many more goals. The Union scored 57, led by Tai Baribo's 16. The Whitecaps scored 66, led by Brian White's 16. Minnesota scored 56, although 10 came from the now-departed Tani Oluwaseyi and nine came from the now-injured Kelvin Yeboah, which drops the Loons to Austin FC-level scoring for a playoff series against Seattle.
Nico Estévez did well to get this team to the playoffs this year, and the points per million numbers indicate it happened without big bucks spent on talent — even woith the outlay for the team's two most expensive players next season.
But for 2026, there's one of two directions Austin FC could aspire to go — either getting more out of a payroll that is comparatively low, or somehow adding to the payroll to amass more fortune-changing talent. Knowing what we know about the roster, I'd expect it to tip toward the first approach, with the awareness that scoring more goals is a must — regardless of how much they cost.
Verde All Day is a reader-supported online publication covering Austin FC. Additional support is provided by Austin Telco Federal Credit Union. For more coverage, check out Emergency Podcast! (an Austin FC Podcast) wherever you get your podcasts.
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