Speed is the thing: Verde's best Twitter pundit weighs in on Austin FC's recent form

This article was originally published by one of our favorite Austin FC online pundits, Kevin Morris, on his new Substack earlier Monday. We're sharing it here at The Striker with his permission.

It's the similarities of the two goals that stand out. A ball fizzing through the cool Portland air, tracing a perfect, beautiful parabolic line that ends exactly on the forehead of an Austin attacker. One from Emiliano Rigoni, a seeming connoisseur of putting the “x” in xG. The other to Will Bruin, a league veteran who, like every other striker for Austin this season, has seemed almost shy to score goals. It was all, really, quite unusual.

This season, crosses have rarely found purchase. They have been launched at great volume, in sudden bombardments or constant, dull drum beats. But Saturday night, despite playing without their talisman star and with a seemingly makeshift lineup, Austin FC’s crosses found purpose. Twice in the second half, a cross left the foot of a wide player and connected to a thundering runner in the box. And yes, twice Austin scored.

Crosses have become Austin’s crutch—an attacking choice that is conveniently symbolic of the team’s limitations in realizing its coach’s ideal style of play. Home against Violette in a must-win-by-three-goals game, Austin launched a hailstorm of crosses into the box, with little to show for it. It has seemed, at times, almost mindless.

Over the past two games, however, Austin FC has scored twice from crossing plays that Josh Wolff could have drawn up on his tactics board. Four goals in two games from an attacking pattern that seemed like it would never pay off with any consistency. What has happened?

'A positional play guy'

Wolff is a positional play guy, a coach inspired by the ball-dominant philosophy of Pep and Arteta and Tuchel. There should be something intricate about how the team builds down the line and into the box, slick movements into and out of half-spaces that unsettle defenses and expose space for a single, slip-of-the-knife pass into the box. But Austin doesn’t have fullbacks with the technical skills to make this possible. Gallagher has been a revelation for Austin, but he is no Zinchenko. He is all speed and relentless work, a player who beats you with his overwhelming enthusiasm to just fly.

So Wolff adapted: Rather than build intricately around the box, looking for a high percentage chance on the floor, Austin often instead works to unsettle the defensive line, then hit a whipped cross to a back-post runner who in turn knocks that ball back across for a similar high-percentage chance. (Or, if the window is there, just hammer it directly into the goal — exactly what happened last night). Again, it is what you do when your fullback is Nick Lima and not Jordi Alba. 

This works best when the ball moves fast across the field. But the switch to a three-back system, meant to help the team break through pressure and control the ball more effectively, has caused a disruption of roles, an overthinking of positional play, and an overall drag on the speed of play. Against St. Louis to start the season, midfielders were lost. The center of the pitch was a great empty void, as if somehow space itself was expanding when the ball wide was played— a problem both for Josh Wolff and theoretical physicists, apparently, to solve. Without players where they need to be down the field, the only answer is often to move backward. 

In most cases, at any rate, Wolff’s solution for filling these gaps has been threefold: Pull Dani Pereira into the back three and send another center back forward down the line, play a pair of tucked-in wingers (Rigoni and Driussi, or Rigoni and Redes) who occupy central spaces and can rotate wide, and get the striker to either check back into space or simply be available for a final ball down the field. 

This setup has worked occasionally, most notably against Montréal, but it has often collapsed because of players simply not suitable for the role. Zan Kolmanic is neither a wingback nor a center back—he struggles to help when he needs to rotate centrally, or do much more when playing wide than whip in a simple cross. Diego Fagundez has often struggled to adapt to either of the new positions necessitated by this lineup: wingback or inverted winger. 

'The ball has to move quickly'

The other solution has been the switch back to a back four and push fullbacks high to build attacking overloads down the wings, a formation played with some success in a similar 2-2 draw against San Jose a week ago. But Wolff doesn't favor this for the club’s long-term future because of how much this formation struggles to build out of the back in a press. As a temporary solution in the face of personnel shortages and square-block-round-hole problems, a back four is fine. But long term? Wolff seems committed to building his teams around three center backs.

Regardless, the key for both formations is the speed of play: the ball has to move quickly, to zip down the field on a wire, either in big switches from one side to the other, or in direct vertical balls that bypass defensive lines. The slower the team builds, the faster opposition can make their defensive shape. Once they are in that shape, Austin's familiar problem reappears: breaking down a defensive block. The big cross to a back post runner only works when there is space run into, and that space is orders of magnitude more difficult to find when defensive lines are already set. 

Against Portland on Saturday night, we saw a glimpse of how this is all meant to work. The team moved the ball quickly and decisively, launching fast-moving and aggressive movements that regularly left the Portland lines completely out of sorts. Rigoni and Redes drifted in and out of central spaces, providing outlets for driving balls from the center backs. Lundqvist and Gallagher hugged the line, becoming targets for big switches out of the back or yanking opposing defenders out of position, creating those very same gaps that Redes and Rigoni exploited. 

With a trio of technically sound center backs, Pereira and Owen Wolff have less on their shoulders. They still need to progress the ball themselves, of course, but they now have help when their own play isn't on.

Why you missed Cascante

Indeed, perhaps most important to the team's play last night was Julio Cascante's return. It is only in being absent that Cascante has found true appreciation. Yes, he can be defensively suspect. But his play with the ball at his feet is close to elite in this league. Cascante may not be the fastest sprinter, but when he's on the field, the whole team plays faster. 

It is strange to celebrate two draws, and it's surely a sign of just how bad Austin has started its season that these two games feel so consequential. But as much as we love the big moments, a successful season in soccer is often attritional. It is about simply playing the right way as often, and for as long, as possible. The points will add up, over time. 

So the question we're left with now is this: Has Wolff finally found the right way for his team, for this specific group of players, to play? 

If you'd like to subscribe to Kevin Morris' new Substack, it might inspire him to write more.