The Thursday Three: Using the pain of losing the Open Cup final as fuel

"This is the press conference you don't want to have," said Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez, early in the largely funereal Q&A period following his team's 2-1 loss to Nashville SC in the 2025 U.S. Open Cup final on Wednesday night. Sitting alongside captain Ilie Sánchez, he acknowledged the pain felt by players, coaching staff, and fans alike following the defeat.

A theme emerged early in the press conference: Using the fuel of the pain they felt in the wake of the loss to propel them in the upcoming playoffs — provided they qualify, which they can officially do at home on Saturday night against St. Louis City SC with a win or draw (or various combinations of Colorado, San Jose, and/or Dallas falling short).

"We deserved much, much, much, much more in this final than what we got, what we hope[d for]," Estécvez said. "What we can learn from that is use the pain that we have. Use that pain. It is not easy.

"First of all, I would like to recognize it's not easy to play a final," he added. "To lose finals, you have to play finals, and [I'm] very proud of the players ... the journey that they've done to arrive here to this point ... hopefully, we learned from that today, and that pain that we have is the fuel that helps us to wake up tomorrow and leads us to get what we want to get in the rest of the season."

Building on a question about keeping chins up in the wake of the loss, Sanchéz added, "We are proud of everyone that had a role in this final and leading into playing this game here at home ... and when I say everyone, I mean players, coaches, staff, executives, ownership group, every single one of the fans that have been with the team throughout this journey and the ones that are going to be here with the team for what's to come."

While multiple players echoed Estévez's assertion that they played well enough to deserve a win, Brad Stuver made the point several times that Nashville only had two shots on goal, and despite limiting Hany Mukhtar to a single shot on goal, and Sam Surridge to none in the run of play, both of the visitors' talismanic players were able to come through in clutch moments.

(Also, Nashville, in winning its first final, did so two years removed from painfully losing the Leagues Cup final to Inter Miami in penalty kicks.)

A resilient run

Despite the loss on Wednesday, Austin FC did have an incredible tournament, having been on the brink of elimination against El Paso in the team's first match before roaring back with three goals in eight minutes, beating their Houston rivals handily, and then dramatically vanquishing both San Jose and Minnesota before getting to a final where they went down and then equalized before halftime.

"We learned that we're a good team in a knockout game," Estévez said. "We're a very difficult and tough team because we have the mentality to sacrifice and to defend all together. We have the mentality to go after the game, and we have the mental capacity to deal with different situations presented to us throughout this competition. Then this is what we have to take. We have to believe in that we're a good team in these types of games, and that if ... when, when, when we clinch the playoff and we play the playoff, we have to have that in time."

Calling the tournament "a reflection of our season," Sánchez pointed to the growth of the team throughout 2025.

"This tournament has been a reflection of the process that we are in, where we started and how much we improved in this season," he said.

Continuing with the pain-as-fuel theme, he continued, "We are very hurt. All of us, using this pain, the coaches, addressing the game, addressing the group, finishing the reflection ... with this feeling of using the pain to wake up tomorrow to come to the training center and prepare [for] Saturday's game. It's going to be another challenge, but as soon as we can switch to league mode and hopefully learn from this experience, at least use what we have inside to come back, not just better, but stronger."

While Stuver agreed that the run showed resilience, it also provided tough lessons about where Austin FC is at this stage of its development.

"We're a resilient group, but we're also still a group that has to be at our very best every single game," he said. "We're not a group that can rely on individual talent each game. We're a team that has to rely on the collective and we're at our best when we're sticking to the game plan."

'It happens every corner'

Wednesday's match hinged on Dani Pereira being called for a foul inside the box on Jeisson Palacios, which MLS writer Charles Boehm argued was legitimate — indicative of national media's tilt toward appreciating Nashville winning Tennessee's first-ever pro sports title.

The call allowed Surridge to step up and take the penalty kick at the hour mark, leaving Verde with a one-goal deficit they couldn't overcome; Sánchez assessed the situation as the team running out of time, even though they had more than a half hour to mount a comeback — and did engineer some chances within that, despite Nashville deploying some time-wasting 'housery to thwart any momentum Verde could mount.

(Stuver said, of the time-wasting, "We would have done the same thing," though perhaps not as brazenly, as on one Brian Schwake goal kick, fans got deep into a double-digit count of seconds before he finally sent the ball upfield well outside of the six-second time limit world soccer typically mandates.)

"It happens every corner," bemoaned Dani Pereira of the jostling that led to the questionable (to Austin fans) call. "We were both grabbing each other; it happens every corner."

Jon Gallagher was particularly upset by the call.

"How much can I say without getting fined?" he quipped. "I mean, I've seen the decision. I don't know how much I can say without being fined, but ... I think we've got to have honest reflection about that," making clear he was talking about the veracity of Tori Penso's critical call.

"It's a final," he granted. "It doesn't really matter how you play, it's about winning the game, but when I see the decision that was made to win the game," before making a sound halfway between "whoa" and "woof" to voice his displeasure.

"There's not one situation that's going to make or break our game, whether it's soft or not," Stuver said of the penalty. "I haven't seen it back, but like I was telling these guys, I don't know if ours was a PK either," referring to the penalty kick that Myrto Uzuni was granted and then missed shortly after Nashville's opening goal.

"I watched it back on the video screen, and as a goalkeeper, it looks like it gets a little bit of a touch," he said of that earlier call, before returning to his thesis.

"So it doesn't matter what the calls are on the field. We need to be able to put that game away a little bit earlier. For us, it's a learning moment. They lost the final in 2023, so they knew what the final was going to be about ... so for us, this is a learning moment for a young club. Utilize it going forward."

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