Preview: Austin FC at DC United

DC United faces its easiest remaining home opponent

A lot of people have criticized Ally Mackay for saying they aren't giving up on the season when, in truth, DC has only a mathematical chance of making the playoffs. I understand fans feeling gaslit, but I have to say I mostly side with Mackay. Pro sports people aren't supposed to give up when something is still mathematically possible. Yes, we can do the math and see DC's maximum points are 49, which would require an insanely implausible ten game winning streak to close the season, and we know that the playoff line will probably be 45 points or so. But no MLS team has even reached 49 points yet this season. The players are being asked to go out there and put their bodies on the line, so I don't think it's reasonable for team leadership to just raise the white flag quite yet.

Meanwhile we'll wait to see what happens in the MLS transfer window that opened on Thursday and stays open until August 21st. I am expecting a Klich/Benteke-level player to be added, not so much for salvaging this season but to start the acclimation process for next season (and, along with the new coach, to give ticket reps something to try to get season ticket renewals with).

The Lineup

Well, no Aaron Herrera. I would replace him with Antley, but the team had Derek Dodson as the player representative at the pregame press conference, so I’ll guess we’ll see him. He actually played in front of Antley against Columbus as the right midfielder, but I can’t believe they’re going to do that twice in a row.

Backup goalkeeper: Kim Joon Hong

Backup defenders: Matti Peltola, Jackson Hopkins, Conner Antley, Garrison Tubbs

Backup attackers: Randall Leal, Dominique Badji, Hosei Kijima, Jared Stroud

Not selected and possibly still injured: Lukas MacNaughton, Jacob Murrell

The Opponent: Austin FC

Austin is having the sort of mediocre, midtable season I was hoping DC United might achieve this year (alas). They are 8th in the Western Conference and actually 7th in points per game since they’ve only played 22 games.

They haven’t gotten there the way I thought DC might get there, though. They have the league’s best defense and have only given up 24 goals. Compare that to DC’s nearly-league-worst goals allowed of 45. Whereas Vancouver and Philadelphia also have very good defenses and as far as I can tell have gotten there by being, well, very good teams, Austin is kind of like Charlotte last year where it has a sterling goals against statistic but also has a terrible offense. I’ll be honest, I haven’t watched Austin this year, but when I see those two things together I assume the coach is being really conservative.

No team has scored fewer goals than Austin has (17). Even DC has scored three more goals, and although they've played two more games, Austin is averaging way less than one goal per game.

Eerily similar to Atlanta United, Austin is another team that has done everything MLS fans always want their ownership to do (spend big on transfers) and is getting almost nothing out of it. They brought in three attacking DPs across two transfer windows: Osman Bukari last summer for $7.5 million and then, this past offseason, Myrto Uzuni for $12.3 million and Brandon Vazquez for $10 million.

So much money spent, and on guys with pretty good pedigree! Bukari did well in the Serbian league, and okay, who knows how that level is and he was playing for the league's best team, but in the 23-24 season Uzuni scored 11 goals in La Liga for a relegation-bound Grenada. Surely a guy like that can score in MLS! And Vasquez had an 18 goal, 8 assist season for Cincinnati in 2022, so he’s done it in MLS before, and while he didn't get a ton of minutes on a very good Monterey team, his per-90 production in Liga MX was still pretty good.

But it's all gone wrong. Vazquez has 5 goals in almost 18 games worth of minutes, and just 4 if you don't count his penalty goal. Uzuni has 2 goals and 2 assists. Bukari has 1 goal and 2 assists. And they’ve both played about as many minutes as Vazquez. So that's almost $30m spent just in transfer fees for 8 goals and 4 assists. Damn.

Vazquez in particular at least has twice as many non-penalty expected goals as he does actual non-penalty goals, so there was some reason to hope his scoring would pick up somewhat, but adding injury to insult, he tore his ACL earlier this month and is out for the season.

Despite these offensive struggles, Austin arrives with extra rest (their previous game was last Wednesday) and amid a decent run of form: three wins, two losses, and five draws in their last ten MLS regular season games. The wins are mostly against bad teams (e.g. they just beat the LA Galaxy) but, yeah, that’s the sort of team they’ll be playing in this game too.

Homegrown player Owen Wolff (son of Josh Wolff, who I often forget played a season and change for DC back in 2011-2012) in a supplemental roster slot is tied for the team lead in G+A with 1 goal and 4 assists. Most of those assists were early in the season, but the goal was in last week’s win over the LA Galaxy, so he’s got a little momentum.

As you'd expect for a team with such good goals allowed numbers, goalkeeper Brad Stuver is having a very good shotstopping year and recently played in the All-Star Game. He's been good for years in a stat where there's often a lot of volatility. So far this is his best shotstopping year of his career at age 33 (just a hair better than last season).

There’s one more notable Austin player for DC fans: starting central defender Brandon Hines-Ike, who went to Austin after three injury-plagued seasons at DC United. I didn’t have a problem with his being let go at the time given his health issues, but as luck (?) would have it, his injury problems cleared up when he left and he's been pretty healthy since then. He's already played more this season than his best DC season (2022).

What I’m Looking For

This certainly isn’t an easy game (no games are easy for this iteration of DC United) but Austin is the weakest remaining home opponent. On paper it’s also the kind of matchup (bad offense, good defense) that DC has done better with this season.

Three points would really help DC in the quest to avoid the Wooden Spoon. The current “leader”, CF Montréal, plays on the road against New England. St. Louis has a tough match against Minnesota while LA Galaxy plays a winnable game against Houston. It’s going to be down to the wire.