Where are they now? Tracking down all the players on the 2021 Austin FC squad
If you're wondering what happened to Danny Hoesen, Will Pulisic, and Kekuta Manneh, this article is for you.
While the 2021 Austin FC team might have not been very good, judging by its record, they were truly our not very good — arriving after a 15-month-long saga that involved now-Austin FC CEO Anthony Precourt threatening to move the Columbus Crew to Austin, a movement to Save the Crew that turned much of the MLS fanbases against Austin, a protracted effort to get the Austin City Council to turn city-owned land over to Precourt’s team to construct a stadium (including City Council meetings that sometimes went until 3 am because the members decided to have soccer fans there to clearly testify on just soccer to sit through other city business), a 7-4 vote to work with Precourt that is still celebrated in a La Murga chant, and a deal brokered by MLS brass allowing the Crew to remain in Ohio under new ownership and Precourt to launch a brand new franchise.
Oh, and then COVID-19 came along, derailing sports in 2020. MLS emerged that summer with the MLS Is Back tournament, successfully held in the bubble at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Central Florida. Austin FC’s first sporting director, Claudio Reyna, built a team under those conditions isolating an entire planet full of people from each around this time. He did it, in part, with the help of agent Diego Serrati, who provided a trio of players evoking their own unique blends of visceral reaction: Cecilio Domínguez, Rodney Redes, and Jhohan Romaña. (Come to think of it, for those in the know, Serrati also courts his own unique blend of visceral reaction.)
But he did also manage to stumble on some players who anchored or played significant roles on the club in its first five years. Let’s review some history.
The OGs
If we’re counting Owen Wolff as a first-year player — and we should, because he did sign his homegrown contract in September, and logged eight minutes of substitute time to close out the 2021 season (one minute in the home closer against SKC, and seven minutes in the meaningless Decision Day match in Portland), we have the following six players who were part of the inaugural season still with the club today, with their Verde MLS regular seasons tallied:
Julio Cascante, defender (125 matches played, 112 started)
Jon Gallagher, forward/midfielder, defender (159 matches played, 122 started)
Žan Kolmanič, defender (97 matches played, 52 started – and with three playoff appearances, he just hit 100 total)
Of the six, only Kolmanič has missed significant time with injury, recovering from ACL tear that kept him sidelined for most of the 2023 season.
Stuver has only missed four of Austin’s 170 regular-season matches (once with COVID and three games with a goalpost-induced leg injury suffered in Houston) and is the team’s all-time leader in appearances. Given that he’s in line to start through 2027 with an option year in 2028 — we can entertain the Damian Las question in another article — he’s likely to maintain that status for years to come.
Still in MLS
Six players have moved on from Austin FC to other destinations — perhaps most notably Diego Fagundez, who scored the first goal in club history and was an early fan favorite. We can’t ignore Sebastian Berhalter, though, who experienced visible growing pains while in Verde but is now an All-Star after a dynamic 2025 with the Whitecaps. Here’s the tally.
Sebastian Berhalter, midfielder (now with Vancouver Whitecaps FC)
Diego Fagundez, midfielder (now with LA Galaxy)
Nick Lima, defender (now with San Jose Earthquakes)
Brady Scott, goalkeeper (now with LA Galaxy)
Jared Stroud, midfielder and turncoat (now with DC United, after a memorable stint with St. Louis)
Andrew Tarbell, goalkeeper (now with Houston Dynamo FC, and rehabbing a season-ending knee injury with his contract ending at the end of this year, so there's a danger he slips into this next category)
Retired or are “between teams”
We have some players who played for Verde in 2021 who no longer are playing; some are officially retired, while at least one with a famous cousin is, to borrow from This Is Spinal Tap, “currently residing in the ‘where are they now’ file.”
Matt Besler, defender (last with Austin FC in 2021, not even a one-day contract with SKC for an official retirement ceremony there, which seems a shame)
Danny Hoesen, forward (last with Emmen in the Eerste Divisie, the second tier of Netherlands pro soccer, in 2023)
Hector Jimenez, defender (last with Austin FC in 2024, currently an assistant coach with Chicago Fire FC)
Kekuta Manneh (last with Pacific FC in 2023, though Infallible Wikipedia says he moonlighted with Lonestar SC in 2025, but I don’t know if you can count that as professional soccer)
Will Pulisic, goalkeeper (last with Minnesota United FC 2 in 2023)
Aaron Schoenfeld, forward (last with Austin FC in 2021)
Ben Sweat, defender (last with New England Revolution in 2023, announced retirement early in 2024)
Still livin’ the dream
Seven players are still trying to tough it out as professional soccer players outside of MLS, God bless ‘em.
Moussa Djitté, forward, Grenoble (not sure when contract ends, but good for him getting back to the team he left to go to Austin)
Manny Perez, defender and midfielder and sometimes forward when wearing Verde, Louisville City (contract ends Nov. 30, 2025)
Alex Ring, defensive midfielder, HJK Helsinki (contract ends Dec. 31, 2026)
Ulises Segura, midfielder, Puntarenas FC (in Costa Rica, unsure when contract ends, he is an Austin FC legend for signing but not playing a single game yet working out a legendary online commercial advertising a local car washing business)
From South America you came, to South America you shall return
Austin FC did not have solid, consistent luck with the players it first selected from South America. You’ll recognize these names, including the three we mentioned earlier.
Cecilio Domínguez, forward, Cerro Porteño (under contract until June 30, 2026)
Sebastián Driussi, attacking midfielder, River Plate (under contract until Dec. 31, 2028)
Tomás Pochettino, midfielder, Fortaleza (under contract until Dec. 31, 2027)
Rodney Redes, forward, Club Olimpia (under contract until Dec. 31, 2026)
Jhohan Romaña, defender, San Lorenzo (under contract until Dec. 31, 2026)
We’re glossing over a lot of history here. This list includes:
The first designated player in Austin FC history, who left under the cloud of a domestic violence scandal in 2022, after netting just seven goals in his debut season;
The first signing in Austin FC history, who scored two goals in 54 appearances in all competitions;
The highest-scoring player in Austin FC history, who still managed to leave under a cloud of controversy at the end of the 2024 season despite an absolutely brilliant 2022 season;
A designated player heralded upon his arrival as a transformative player who managed just two goals in 31 matches before being moved; and
A defender who was openly criticized for his lack of fitness by his head coach, who then "retaliated" by posting some ripped ab photos on Instagram to show that he was indeed in shape, who now plays for the former Pope’s favorite team.
It’s wild how much South American history runs through Austin FC’s opening year, given how the team is built under current sporting director Rodolfo Borrell.
This year, the sole newly acquired South American player for Austin FC is Nico Dubersarksy, a U22 defensive midfielder who got 688 minutes, 20 appearances, and seven starts. Guilherme Biro, a hasty last-minute sub for Jordi Alba to achieve All-Star status, got three goals and one assist in more than 2600 regular-season minutes. Two other South Americans, Jáder Obrian and Diego Rubio, combined for a little more than 1800 minutes, two goals, and four assists, which gives Obrian perhaps more credit than he’s due, getting only a single assist after leading the team in goals in 2024.
Today, the team relies more on players like Kolmanič, connected to the Balkans and neighboring Eastern European countries, than players from South America considered the ideal when Precourt was eyeing 2018 Atlanta and 2019 LAFC as models for MLS success, while not quite reaching the “flipping one player for millions to get another player for millions” tier of roster building.
Austin FC has come a considerable distance from that initial team. I would argue that it’s a better overall collection of players, who are getting better results, with better coaching more appropriate to the capabilities of the players who are here.
But look at the evolution of teams that arrived in Austin’s era and after, and you see how different approaches can bring about more favorable results. St. Louis looked like they had something until they didn’t, while San Diego chose wisely in building a team around Andres Dreyer, even though he wasn’t even that team's initial headline-grabbing designated player.
While this probably isn’t the offseason in which Verde will transform into a team with elite talent, it could be an offseason in which the mix of designated players Austin FC has finally makes sense, or there’s some kind of reset that helps hit on the formula that’s allowed other newer teams to court success from the jump.
In the meantime, at least there is a core of players that will likely, mostly stay intact — though it’s also conceivable that three of those six could make an exit by next opening day in February. (But we'll theoretically learn at least a little more about that in the next week.)
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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Just looking at raw numbers, Myrto Uzuni's already contributed more in one season than Emiliano Rigoni did in a season and a half worth of matches. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
While the 2021 Austin FC team might have not been very good, judging by its record, they were truly our not very good — arriving after a 15-month-long saga that involved now-Austin FC CEO Anthony Precourt threatening to move the Columbus Crew to Austin, a movement to Save the Crew that turned much of the MLS fanbases against Austin, a protracted effort to get the Austin City Council to turn city-owned land over to Precourt’s team to construct a stadium (including City Council meetings that sometimes went until 3 am because the members decided to have soccer fans there to clearly testify on just soccer to sit through other city business), a 7-4 vote to work with Precourt that is still celebrated in a La Murga chant, and a deal brokered by MLS brass allowing the Crew to remain in Ohio under new ownership and Precourt to launch a brand new franchise.
Oh, and then COVID-19 came along, derailing sports in 2020. MLS emerged that summer with the MLS Is Back tournament, successfully held in the bubble at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Central Florida. Austin FC’s first sporting director, Claudio Reyna, built a team under those conditions isolating an entire planet full of people from each around this time. He did it, in part, with the help of agent Diego Serrati, who provided a trio of players evoking their own unique blends of visceral reaction: Cecilio Domínguez, Rodney Redes, and Jhohan Romaña. (Come to think of it, for those in the know, Serrati also courts his own unique blend of visceral reaction.)
But he did also manage to stumble on some players who anchored or played significant roles on the club in its first five years. Let’s review some history.
The OGs
If we’re counting Owen Wolff as a first-year player — and we should, because he did sign his homegrown contract in September, and logged eight minutes of substitute time to close out the 2021 season (one minute in the home closer against SKC, and seven minutes in the meaningless Decision Day match in Portland), we have the following six players who were part of the inaugural season still with the club today, with their Verde MLS regular seasons tallied:
Of the six, only Kolmanič has missed significant time with injury, recovering from ACL tear that kept him sidelined for most of the 2023 season.
Stuver has only missed four of Austin’s 170 regular-season matches (once with COVID and three games with a goalpost-induced leg injury suffered in Houston) and is the team’s all-time leader in appearances. Given that he’s in line to start through 2027 with an option year in 2028 — we can entertain the Damian Las question in another article — he’s likely to maintain that status for years to come.
Still in MLS
Six players have moved on from Austin FC to other destinations — perhaps most notably Diego Fagundez, who scored the first goal in club history and was an early fan favorite. We can’t ignore Sebastian Berhalter, though, who experienced visible growing pains while in Verde but is now an All-Star after a dynamic 2025 with the Whitecaps. Here’s the tally.
Retired or are “between teams”
We have some players who played for Verde in 2021 who no longer are playing; some are officially retired, while at least one with a famous cousin is, to borrow from This Is Spinal Tap, “currently residing in the ‘where are they now’ file.”
Still livin’ the dream
Seven players are still trying to tough it out as professional soccer players outside of MLS, God bless ‘em.
From South America you came, to South America you shall return
Austin FC did not have solid, consistent luck with the players it first selected from South America. You’ll recognize these names, including the three we mentioned earlier.
We’re glossing over a lot of history here. This list includes:
It’s wild how much South American history runs through Austin FC’s opening year, given how the team is built under current sporting director Rodolfo Borrell.
This year, the sole newly acquired South American player for Austin FC is Nico Dubersarksy, a U22 defensive midfielder who got 688 minutes, 20 appearances, and seven starts. Guilherme Biro, a hasty last-minute sub for Jordi Alba to achieve All-Star status, got three goals and one assist in more than 2600 regular-season minutes. Two other South Americans, Jáder Obrian and Diego Rubio, combined for a little more than 1800 minutes, two goals, and four assists, which gives Obrian perhaps more credit than he’s due, getting only a single assist after leading the team in goals in 2024.
Today, the team relies more on players like Kolmanič, connected to the Balkans and neighboring Eastern European countries, than players from South America considered the ideal when Precourt was eyeing 2018 Atlanta and 2019 LAFC as models for MLS success, while not quite reaching the “flipping one player for millions to get another player for millions” tier of roster building.
Austin FC has come a considerable distance from that initial team. I would argue that it’s a better overall collection of players, who are getting better results, with better coaching more appropriate to the capabilities of the players who are here.
But look at the evolution of teams that arrived in Austin’s era and after, and you see how different approaches can bring about more favorable results. St. Louis looked like they had something until they didn’t, while San Diego chose wisely in building a team around Andres Dreyer, even though he wasn’t even that team's initial headline-grabbing designated player.
While this probably isn’t the offseason in which Verde will transform into a team with elite talent, it could be an offseason in which the mix of designated players Austin FC has finally makes sense, or there’s some kind of reset that helps hit on the formula that’s allowed other newer teams to court success from the jump.
In the meantime, at least there is a core of players that will likely, mostly stay intact — though it’s also conceivable that three of those six could make an exit by next opening day in February. (But we'll theoretically learn at least a little more about that in the next week.)
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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