When will Austin FC's first win of 2024 come?
Verde follows up an Opening Day loss with a tough slate of matches. Are any of them winnable? We take a look.
Consider last year’s downtrodden Sporting Kansas City fans. The team from the land of inferior barbecue couldn’t find a win in its first 10 matches of the season, affected by injuries and bad luck. Even though the team got a win in Match 11, they ended up struggling more and were at a miserable 2W 8L 4D record after 14 matches.
People thought Peter Vermes, the “granitic gneisses in the vicinities of Morton and Montevideo in the Minnesota River Valley” of American soccer coaches, could be fired. (Yes, I just Googled “oldest rock formations in the U.S.” to create a winning metaphor.) People thought SKC was Wooden Spoon-bound.
But something strange happened: They stopped sucking so much. The injured players healed. Vermes led. The players found their feet. SKC not only managed to claw to the 8/9 play-in match, they won it and then beat St. Louis in a best-of-three series that was rage making for Lou fans and hilarious for neutrals. They did fall to the Dynamo in the Western Conference semis, but if you told Sporting fans at that 14th match juncture, “You can make the final eight in MLS playoffs this year and you only have to give up one of the eight articles of Chiefs or Royals clothing you own,” you’d end up with a sizable pile of Chiefs and Royals garb.
MLS teams can occasionally overcome slow starts to make the playoffs, which is good in Austin’s case, because after Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Minnesota United FC, it looks like this team could be in for a slow start. In fact, you could argue that this most recent match, with an MLS Next Pro coach leading a team without its two best players, was the most winnable game in this opening stretch of the season.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the next nine games on the schedule and see where that possibly elusive first win might come from.
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