Rodo holds court: Highlights from a 53-minute press conference

Here's a sign that Austin FC sporting director Rodolfo Borrell had a lot to say at Friday's preseason media availability: The club uploaded the video file from the event in two parts.

The overall tenor of the 53-minute dialogue – mostly monologue to be fair – is that Borrell's delivered a lot of the players that head coach Nico Estévez needs to be successful over the last two transfer windows, and now the coach and players need to deliver, with playoff qualification as the bare baseline for measuring success in 2025.

Here are a few of the themes that caught my ear.

Establishing the timeline

Here's what Borrell said about everything prior to the last two transfer windows, in song form.

(Just the title, we hasten to add.)

Specifically, he clarified, "I'm responsible from one year ago, not from one and a half year ago," even though he arrived in the summer of 2023.

"One and a half years ago, I landed here, couldn't do anything," he hedged. "So what's happened that year is what's happened that year. So from last year, yes, belongs to me. And listen, I'm happy and I'm proud that of the evolution, and again, from the situation that we were at, what we have been able to from that point, obviously, this is at the end of the day, is bringing players. Players need to fail together, play together, gel, and we have to get the results."

If you count Stefan Cleveland, Jáder Obrian, and Guilherme Biro as the first true Borrell signings, he's since brought together a core of players that now make up the majority of Verde's best (in theory, at least) starting 11. Certainly, Saturday evening's starting lineup against Sporting Kansas City won't feature all those players, but the lineup will probably feature only a few players (predicting Brad Stuver, Owen Wolff, and Dani Pereira) signed in the Claudio Reyna era, and maybe none from the Josh Wolff-Sean Rubio era.

Here's a full lineup you could make from players arriving since Christmas Eve 2023.

And per Tom Hallock's eagle eye, here's a better one.

Explaining big-dollar moves

Regarding Myrto Uzuni, the recently arrived Albanian attacker for whom the club dropped a record transfer fee, Borrell was measured in explaining making the move for him (even in the face of one notable media personality already declaring that he's not worth the spend).

"The way he approaches the game was very clear in his press conference. He had lots of hunger and determination," Borrell said. "He has proven this for many years now. Also, the experience in the game and the capacity to score goals, which is one thing that very clearly we were struggling with last year, no? So not only putting that weight on the shoulders of Brandon Vázquez, who obviously was brought in for the same reasons ... to have two in this area of the pitch, hopefully it makes it easier and better for the team."

When challenged on moving Sebastián Driussi to River Plate, with said notable media personality contending Driussi no longer wanted to be in Austin, Borrell quipped, "I got $10 million for a player who didn't want to be here. Win, win, you made my case easier."

Some MLS Next Pro side-eye

While Borrell praised the work that Austin FC II head coach Brett Uttley is doing, he also downplayed the importance of VerDos team success on the overall Austin FC project.

After establishing that the MLS Next Pro championship predated his roster-building, he said, adopting a professorial tone, "They won. You remember? How many players are playing in MLS from that team?" And then, after a pointed pause, "So what's the point?"

"As I mentioned in one of my first press conferences, the competitive distance between MLS and MLS Next Pro is massive, and it's a clear example of that. So it's not underestimating or undervaluing, it's not about that. It's good, but it's too far from the reality of the MLS competitive environment, and that is one of the examples. A winning team has nobody playing them [in MLS], not in Austin FC, as you know. Nowhere. Nowhere."

He also established, once again, that he is not a fan of penalty kick shootouts at the end of MLS games.

'Soccer means nothing'

Thanks to Moisés Chiullán's final question, we got some surprising information about Borrell's origin story.

"In my family, soccer means nothing," he revealed. "I mean nothing, to the point that I was the black sheep of the family, until I was appointed by Football Club Barcelona back in 1995." They would have preferred he become a doctor or architect, observing, "As my mom said, 'I don't understand what you see in these guys chasing a ball all around.'"

His family moved from the city center of Barcelona to a building about 300 yards from Camp Nou, Barcelona's home stadium, when he was still a young child, and from their 12th-floor balcony, he could see the field.

"So my mom says that I was all the time, asking for her to be on the balcony, and that I would spend hours, like looking down on that thing."

He also revealed how far back he goes with new captain Ilie Sánchez, recruiting him to play for Barcelona when Sánchez was 17.

"I know the person very much, and I know of his leadership on and off the pitch, because he's not only about it during the game, he's in the locker room, he's on a daily basis in the training ground with the younger players, with the older players, with everything, everybody. He's a guy that is extremely professional. He's here first thing in the morning, and sometimes leaving here at six in the evening, looks very much after himself. He's always been this way. And to me was this intention to bring experience alongside leadership. That is one thing that I believe we were missing a little bit since I arrived here."

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