Austin FC

Team information

Inaugural season: 2021

Home stadium: Q2 Stadium

Owner: Anthony Precourt

Team colors: Green, black

Overview

Austin FC, the abbreviation for the Austin Football Club, is a team in Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-level men’s professional league in North America. The team played its inaugural season in 2021 as the league’s twenty-seventh franchise. MLS officially announced that Austin would be the destination for an expansion team in January 2019 following the city’s failed bid to lure the Columbus Crew to the Texas metropolis. The move made MLS the first major North American professional sports league to base a franchise in Austin, which ranked among the fastest-growing major metropolitan centers in the United States at the time of the team’s founding.

Playing its home games at the purpose-built Q2 Stadium, Austin FC is owned by Anthony Precourt. Previously, Precourt owned the Crew through his Two Oak Ventures company. However, he sold the Crew to a group of investors in 2018 after Columbus city officials failed to accommodate his repeated requests to approve construction of a new stadium.

Austin FC made a highly successful home debut in 2021 to a sold-out crowd of more than twenty thousand fans at Q2 stadium. Though the club struggled on the field during its inaugural season, MLS observers generally characterized the team’s first year of operations as being highly successful. Notably, the team employs actor Matthew McConaughey as its so-called “Minister of Culture.” The Academy Award-winning thespian is a Texas native and an alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin. He also owns a minority stake in the club.

History

Austin FC’s founding is directly tied to the ownership and potential relocation saga that beset the MLS’s Columbus Crew for several years prior. Precourt acquired a controlling stake in the Crew in July 2013. By 2017, he was mired in difficult and protracted negotiations with Columbus officials over construction of a new stadium, which Precourt believed was necessary to ensure the franchise’s future in the city. In October 2017, Precourt went public with his intentions to move the club to Austin if municipal officials in Columbus failed to meet his demands for a new soccer stadium in the city’s downtown area. This sparked a hashtag campaign among the team’s fans, styled on social media as #SaveTheCrew.

In 2018, Precourt was criticized for allegedly interfering with fan access to the Crew’s home stadium during a playoff game. Precourt was accused of opening only two entrances to the stadium and ordering the others closed, forcing fans into long lines that made the stadium appear mostly empty when the game began. Critics dismissed the suspected ploy as an effort by Precourt to make the city of Columbus appear apathetic to the Crew, which had earned a standing as one of MLS’s most successful franchises. Crew fans also grew angry with the apparently cozy relationship between Precourt and senior MLS brass, as the league was accused of colluding with Precourt to pressure Columbus municipal officials into accepting the owner’s stadium demands.

With the #SaveTheCrew campaign earning strong public support, Precourt eventually pivoted in his strategy. He sold the Crew to Jimmy Haslan in December 2018. Haslan, the owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL), committed to keeping the Crew in Columbus and Precourt began negotiating with MLS to place an expansion team in Austin with himself as its owner. In January 2019, MLS officially revealed that a new Austin-based club would join the league for the 2021 season. The announcement closely followed a deal between Precourt and the city of Austin, which established a site for a new $225-million open-air soccer stadium. The venue opened in June 2021 under the name Q2 Stadium.

Austin FC built its roster through various channels, including an expansion draft, which was held in December 2020. The team selected five players in the draft, which complemented its earlier roster-building efforts ahead of the team’s inaugural campaign. Austin FC selected forward Danny Hoesen from the San Jose Earthquakes, midfielder Jared Stroud from the New York Red Bulls, goalkeeper Brady Scott from Nashville SC, midfielder Joe Corona from the Los Angeles Galaxy, and defender Kamal Miller of Orlando City SC.

The club played its first game on April 18, 2021, losing 2–0 to Los Angeles FC. It recorded its first-ever win in its second game, defeating the Colorado Rapids by a score of 3–1 one week later. After opening the 2021 season with eight straight road games while construction crews completed final preparations on Q2 Stadium, Austin FC made its home debut on June 28, 2021, against Columbus. The game ended in a scoreless tie, with McConaughey making an appearance in his role as the club’s “Minister of Culture.” Clad in a green suit and black shirt to reflect the team’s uniform colors, McConaughey performed a drum rally to energize the crowd prior to the game’s opening kickoff.

Under head coach Josh Wolff, Austin FC battled to a record of 9 wins, 21 losses, and 4 ties during its inaugural season, scoring 35 goals and yielding 56 for a goal differential of -21. This showing placed Austin 12th in MLS’s 13-team Western Conference, with the club finishing ahead of Houston Dynamo FC by one point. In the league’s overall standings table, Austin FC finished 24th among 27 teams, besting Houston, Toronto FC, and FC Cincinnati.

In reviewing the club’s first campaign in an analysis article published on the MLS website, sports journalist Michael Lahoud emphasized several observations about Austin FC’s debut campaign. He noted that the team used a consistent set of strategic systems during the season including a 4-3-3 formation among its forwards, midfielders, and defenders, which committed players to an attack-first strategy. Lahoud also praised Austin FC’s management for finding economical player acquisitions and choosing not to fill all three of its Designated Player (DP) slots prior to the beginning of the season, giving the team added flexibility. Under MLS rules, clubs are allowed to sign up to three DPs, whose earnings do not count against the league’s salary cap.

The club finished the 2022 season second in the Western Conference, 16-10-8. The 2023 season saw Austin fall to twelfth in the conference, ending with a 10-15-9 record.

Notable players

Austin FC’s 2021 roster was highlighted by initial DPs Cecilio Dominguez and Tomas Pochettino, along with Diego Fagundez, Jon Gallagher, Sebastian Driussi, Jared Stroud, and Brad Stuver. Dominguez and Fagundez tied for the team lead with 7 goals during the season, followed by Driussi with five.

A Paraguayan midfielder, Dominguez played with various professional teams in South America and Mexico before joining MLS. Immediately prior to becoming a member of Austin FC, Dominguez played for Independiente, an Argentine professional soccer team based in the city of Avellaneda. Pochettino, an Argentine, joined Austin FC after appearing in 27 games across the 2020–2021 seasons for Talleres de Cordoba of the Argentine Primera División (First Division). The midfielder scored 2 goals while appearing in 31 games for Austin FC in 2020, logging 2,229 minutes played.

Fagundez emerged as a star for Austin FC as the 2021 season unfolded, appearing in 33 games and starting 30 while amassing 2,539 minutes on the field. Gallagher, an Ireland-born player who joined MLS in 2018 as a member of Atlanta United, is a former first-round MLS draft pick. As his game matured in 2021, Gallagher emerged as a consistent scoring threat. He finished the season with 3 goals across 27 appearances and 1,261 minutes played. He was acquired in a 2020 trade with Atlanta. He had just 1 goal during the 2022 season but rebounded in 2023, clinching 5 goals.

The Buenos Aires, Argentina-born Driussi joined Austin FC as the team’s third DP in August 2021 after the team paid a reported transfer fee of $7 million to acquire him from Russian club Zenit Saint Petersburg. Driussi potted an impressive 5 goals in just 17 games following his acquisition. In 2022 and 2023, Driussi was the top scorer with 22 and 11 goals, respectively.

Stroud, whom Austin FC acquired from the New York Red Bulls through the MLS expansion draft, was a stabilizing fixture in the team’s midfield in 2021 when he was healthy. Stuver served as the club’s top goalkeeper in 2021, playing 33 of Austin FC’s 34 games while saving 72 percent of the shots he faced in logging nearly three thousand minutes on the field. In reviewing Austin FC’s first season, Fahoud singled out Stuver’s extended stretches of strong play while noting his propensity for making strong passes to midfielders that effectively broke down opponents’ defensive formations. Stuver went on to stop 100 goals in 2022 and 130 in 2023, saving 70.4 and 70.3 percent of the shots respectively.

Bibliography

Bogert, Tom. “2020 Expansion Draft Results: Austin FC Makes Picks.” Major League Soccer, 16 Dec. 2020, www.mlssoccer.com/news/2020-expansion-draft-results-austin-fc-makes-picks. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.

Carlisle, Jeff. “Austin FC Signs Argentine Midfielder Sebastian Driussi.” ESPN, 29 July 2021, www.espn.com/soccer/soccer-transfers/story/4441215/austin-fc-signs-argentine-midfielder-sebastian-driussi. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.

Lahoud, Michael. “4 Lessons Expansion Teams Can Learn from Austin FC.” Major League Soccer, 14 May 2021, www.mlssoccer.com/news/4-lessons-expansion-teams-can-learn-from-austin-fc. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.

LoRé, Michael. “Austin Finally Welcomes Its First Professional Sports Team: Austin FC.” Forbes, 23 June 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/michaellore/2021/06/23/austin-finally-welcomes-its-first-professional-sports-team-austin-fc/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.

Rodgers, Travis. “Browns Owner Jimmy Haslam Helps Keep Crew in Columbus.” USA Today, 29 Dec. 2018, brownswire.usatoday.com/2018/12/29/columbus-crew-saved-due-in-part-to-efforts-by-browns-owner-jimmy-haslam/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.

Solomon, Dan. “The Winding Saga of Austin’s MLS Team Now Includes Jerseys.” Texas Monthly, 18 Nov. 2020, www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/fc-austin-jersey-mls-soccer/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.

"2023 Roster." Major League Soccer Austin FC, 2024, www.mlssoccer.com/clubs/austin-fc/stats/#season=2023&competition=mls-regular-season&club=15296&statType=general&position=all. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.