Press conferences are a sports ritual designed to help journalists get direct insights from coaches and players about what’s transpired on the field, and though the narratives sometimes veer a bit depending on what questions are being asked, they can be weirdly theatrical.
Austin FC even places its post-match press conferences in one of its most exclusive field-level lounges to let high rollers peer into the fishbowl that is the Verde press corps lobbing questions at Josh Wolff and whichever player is brought into the affair.
There was a recent, fascinating look at press conferences from the Guardian’s Jonathan Liew looking at how intrusive they can be at their worst, with a title that starts, "We’re not the good guys." My experience with Austin press conferences, happily, doesn’t veer to the extremes Liew details: Austin FC journalists are generally a convivial group, and Wolff appears to be generally enjoying his interactions with the writers and podcasters.
Thursday was different, though, and not just because it reverted to Zoom out of an abundance of caution over this new phase of the pandemic. It was a gut-punch loss where the press corps expressed concern and even sympathy over what had just transpired, certainly asking Wolff challenging questions but with the definite undertone of “let’s talk through this.” It produced a rich mine of quotes for an analysis in which I asked, “Is this the worst it’ll be for Austin FC?”
It was the most somber, uncomfortable press conference I’d been to since hopping onto the Galaxy press conference after a 4-0 loss to the Quakes last October, shortly before head coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto was relieved of his duties. At the time, I asked defender Daniel Steres if there was anything positive they could take away from the match and he flatly responded, “I can't really say after tonight that anything looks promising.”
The mood got even more sympathetic when Diego Fagundez — arguably as beloved by the press corps as he is by the supporters — settled into the chair, looking somber and glazed and affected by not being able to score against the hybrid MLS-youth movement squad the Sounders brought to Q2. Fagundez immediately commented on how his face and body language reflected his disappointment.
The questions involved the team’s play, Wolff’s observation that players didn’t execute the plan to break down the Sounders ’ bank of defenders, the dearth of scoring — what you’d expect from journalists trying to craft a narrative. I had the last question, and took a slightly different tack, asking about the composure of the teenage players they faced — given that Fagundez himself started in the league as a teenager and knew it was like to be comparatively younger and rawer and thrown into that mix.
Here’s what he said.
“No matter who’s playing, we need to be better, I think the players that we had, we need to take advantage of players like that, teenagers. But I can't say much, because when I was a teenager, I was scoring goals. So it's on every player, everybody needs to do their job. They came out here and played. They played soccer. So props to them, but at the same time, we need to be better. We need to take advantage of those times, bodying them, and giving them a little welcome to this league, because this league is not easy. As soon as you have players like that to get that confidence, who knows how far they can go. And like I said, I was a teenager and I was doing all that, so we just have to be better.”
The press conference ended there, with so much embedded in that answer: A tacit acknowledgment of the achievement that people throughout MLS are celebrating (from the types of players who will flourish in MLS’ new developmental league), reflection on his start in MLS and how was able to able to make his mark early into the Revolution chapter of his career, and what he’s experiencing now — scoring the first goal in Austin FC history, emerging as a beloved and integral player on this inaugural roster, and now in the midst of what is, at best, a scoring drought and at worst, an existential crisis.
It didn’t quite fit into the deep dive I did yesterday, but for Austin FC fans, it deserves its own contemplation — especially the part about welcoming new players to the league part. There was a sequence early in the match where Sam Adeniran, wonderfully profiled by Chris Bils before the match, was stripped by Alex Ring and tagged with a foul in his attempt to win the ball back. It was what Fagundez was hinting at — taking a rookie to school — expect that Adeniran and his even younger teammates accounted well for themselves in the end.
And, in the end, it produced the sort of press conference that isn’t easy to be part of, but one that will likely prove memorable in the unfolding story of this debut season.