Bohls: Some progress for struggling Austin FC, but in the end, a tie is still a tie

If the MLS were the Jeopardy game show, the answer would be “Not a clue.”

The question, of course, is “Which is the real Austin FC?”

As it sits on the doorstep of May, the third-year franchise is nowhere closer to truly defining itself than it was when the season began back in late February.

In 2021 as an expansion team, Austin FC played almost exactly like, well, an expansion team and finished near the cellar of the MLS with a bogged-down offense that couldn’t score and a disastrous transition defense.

Then in 2022, the club exploded onto the scene, scored 10 goals in two early games and went crazy with 65 goals, third-best in the league. Austin flirted with the top of the Western Conference the entire season behind offensive wizard Sebastián Driussi and made it all the way to the conference finals before losing to eventual MLS Cup champion LAFC.

From there, the Verde and Black looked to repeat history. The problem is it’s the history of two years ago.

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This season has been a perfect bad storm

The team is not without talent but has been snake-bit with injuries and ineffectiveness and is winless in its last six games. Help is on the way soon. But Austin has not recaptured any of the magic or the momentum from that uplifting last season and continues to stumble in the first two months of the new season.

On Saturday night, the Verde and Black engaged their nemesis San Jose Earthquakes in front of a relatively packed and fully frustrated Q2 Stadium audience and didn’t come any closer to settling matters. The match offered more of the same.

While a 2-2 draw might be slight cause for hope, it failed to register much encouragement for a starting XI that still struggles to get in sync and play with the same confidence it did a year ago. Austin has struggled to provide any offense this season, so it can ill afford the defensive lapses that allowed easy San Jose goals.

“There was a lot of progress in this performance for sure,” head coach Josh Wolff said, “but it was disappointing. It was a performance to build off and a performance worthy of three points (with a win). Ties at home are tough. And we had many more clear-cut chances than them.”

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Now nine matches into the year, Austin sits in lowly 11th place in the West with a troubling 2-4-3 record. The slow start is made even worse, given the fact that the two other Lone Star teams in Dallas and Houston rank fifth and sixth in the standings.

'We're just not clicking. It is ... yeah, frustrating'

San Jose, a franchise that has never lost to Austin, rose to fourth in the West with Saturday’s draw. Coincidentally enough, the Earthquakes have yet to lose a home match at PayPal Park but had gained just a single point in four road games.

Austin can’t relate. At home, Verde is now a distressing 1-1-3 and has scored just eight goals in nine games. The team has beaten only Montreal — the second-lowest scoring team in MLS — and Salt Lake. That success rate can’t continue if it wants to make another deep run. At this point, one has to wonder if it’ll crack the new, expanded, nine-team playoff field in the West.

“We’re just not clicking,” said Finnish defender Leo Väisänen. "It is ... yeah, frustrating."

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Before anyone looks for a bridge to jump off, know that there were some optimistic signs from Saturday’s match.

Emiliano Rigoni scored a goal.

Rodney Redes assisted on a goal.

Those both fall in the area of ground-breaking achievements because it marked Rigoni’s first-ever MLS goal that encompasses 10 matches late last season and nine this year and Redes’ second assist in his three years with Austin.

So Redes to Rigoni has not quite risen to the level of Mahomes to Kelce. But both had solid performances.

“This was a tough game, but a beautiful game,” Redes said through an interpreter. “We’re going to give it our all every game.”

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A rough start, but help is on the way

Wolff can take some satisfaction in knowing a cavalry is coming. Losing Ruben Gabrielsen to Norway to deal with a family matter was a chemistry setback.

Austin should get back midfielder Diego Fagúndez off his groin injury in a couple of more weeks, and he was a prolific producer last year. The team saw center back Julio Cascante go down in the first seven minutes of the season, but he too will return shortly and was available on Saturday. But the absence of three starters, including left back Zan Kolmanic (knee), has hurt.

Aleksandar Radovanovic, a Serbian defender and center back, has been training with the team and will be of help very soon as well. So there is hope.

Getting Rigoni off the schneid might be even bigger news. He’s moved from his natural right wing to left the last two games and got much better looks at the net.

“These were positive results we needed,” Rigoni said through a translator. “I try to keep calm and play with confidence.”

Rigoni is one of the team’s three designated players, a label reserved for the high-leverage positions, and Austin has a less than stellar record with DPs other than the accomplished Driussi and center back Alex Ring.

Those last two have been stars for the club, but Rigoni had fallen into the same rut as the since-released Tomas Pocchettino and Cecilio Rodriguez, who was let go in part because of a domestic violence issue.

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But if you’re a glass half-full kind of person, you’ll take stock with the fact that both Rigoni and Driussi put balls in the net. That’s the type of output Wolff and the Austin FC braintrust envisioned when they added Rigoni to the mix with his former teammate in Russia. Not that Rigoni was ever the caliber of offensive player Driussi has been in his career, but he was considered a key piece in their offensive renaissance.

A year ago, Driussi went wild with 25 goals, including three in the postseason as the league MVP runner-up.

That chemistry with the two has never quite developed. At least not yet. There’s plenty of time and Austin FC has four of its next six matches at home.

Wolff also has to be mindful of minutes for his roster because Austin FC has a busy May with six games and will also play in the inaugural Leagues Cup. That quirky but highly anticipated competition between the 29 MLS teams and the 18 Liga MX clubs in Mexico will play out between July and August and offer a pause in the MLS schedule.

For that reason and a cluster of games the next month, Wolff’s doing the NBA’s version of load management. He just won’t have a shot at Victor Wembanyama to show for it although he’d probably make a super goal-keeper with his wingspan.

To that end, he rested Jon Gallagher — coincidentally the team’s leading scorer with three goals — the first half and went with Adam Lundkvist and also started Redes and Jhojan Valencia. All of them acquitted themselves well. But a tie is still a tie.

“We’re going to need to disperse the minutes going forward,” Wolff said. “But we got to keep getting better. I mean, ties don’t do much good at home.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin FC soccer team stays in a rut, hangs on for a 2-2 draw