3 Questions with Austin FC Reporter Phil West

Verde All Day's Phil West answers questions about Austin FC ahead of Wednesday night's match.

Photo: LA Galaxy

The LA Galaxy's matchup against Austin FC on Wednesday night is one of the most important games of the 2025 season.

LA is looking to get on a three-game winning streak and get closer to the playoff line with El Trafico looming on Saturday night. MLS is about momentum, and the Galaxy is looking to ride that into the final third of the season.

Austin FC is currently occupying the last playoff spot in the Western Conference heading into Wednesday night’s matchup. Here is a preview of what’s been going on in Texas and what Austin FC brings to the table.

A massive thanks to Phil West from Verde All Day for answering these questions about Austin FC.

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After looking at some of the numbers, I was quite surprised to see Austin FC at the bottom of the league when it comes to goals scored (15). Is the lack of goalscoring a personnel or coaching issue the reason for this extremely low goal production? Is there one player that’s been a consistent difference maker in the final third or shown glimpses of elevating the attack?

This has been the story of the season here in Austin ... and with Brandon Vázquez now out (and we'll get into that a bit more with your second question momentarily), the leading scorer in league play among all healthy upright players is ... Guilherme Biro, a fullback you Galaxy fans know well (a little bit more coming on him in the third question!), who has two goals. Eight other players, including record signing Myrto Uzuni, who came to Austin after scoring double-digit goals in La Liga and saying he was coming here to break records, have just one.

Part of what's happening is they're wildly underperforming xG, and we've been hearing a lot about the xG they've amassed in Nico Estévez's post-match press conferences. You'd figure at some point the law of averages would kick in, only it hasn't. That's frustrating a lot of fans, and it seems to be wearing on the players a bit. In Saturday's 0-0 draw, Uzuni got a square ball pass from Osman Bukari (who's been the team's best chance creator, playing right wing), took a shot with the Revs goalkeeper diving the other way, and he was able to kick save it away, stopping what was a 0.59 xG chance. Toward the end of that match, Uzuni hit the crossbar from about eight yards out. That's been his season — a whole lot of almost and a whole lot of frustration (that he exhibits pretty colorfully), but not much to show for it.

Owen Wolff is the closest thing this team has to a 10 right now, and he's having a superb season. However, there's no other truly reliable chance creator in the midfield, which is evident in the lack of goals.

The season-ending injury to Brandon Vázquez must’ve been a major blow to the entire club. What’s the morale around the club after the MLS All-Star went down? Does it feel like something the players can rally around to get a jump in results? With the transfer window coming up, could we see Austin be active to bolster the frontline and remain above the playoff line.

I was expecting some summer reinforcements even before the Vázquez injury, and now that he's on the season-ending injury list, there might be a chance to grab a striker to see out the season. The best rumor that Austin's been connected to is playmaking Venezuelan Tuti Andrade, who would be a great U22 pickup, and the most solid rumor is for Diego Palacios to return to MLS, which is puzzling given Verde's current needs. It's also quite possible that winger Jáder Obrian is on the way out, given that there are rumors that Colombian teams are interested, and when he was left off the Open Cup roster against San Jose, he liked an Earthquakes Instagram post celebrating Chicho Arango's opening goal, which is Not a Good Social Media Look.

The last few encounters between these two clubs have featured a rash tackle on the Galaxy’s star player deep into stoppage time, a preseason scuffle with Diego Fagundez and a shouting match between players following the regular season game in Austin earlier this year. From an Austin FC perspective, is there some bad blood with the Galaxy? Because there is a portion of the LA Galaxy fan base that views Austin with a more fierce rivalry lens because of the last few games.

Let's put it this way ... Austin supporters created an amazing tifo to start the season, which featured 16 different artists, each painting a portrait of a player. Biro's depicted him with fist raised in the fracas following the Riqui Puig totally reasonable soccer tackle, and it was placed so the eye was drawn to it first. Austin fans are relishing the rivalry, especially given that last time they faced off at Q2 Stadium, it ended with an after-the-match meltdown in which Greg Vanney chased down Biro to berate him and Joseph Paintsil went into "catch me outside" mode with some fans. While I don't think the tensions are as acute or strong as they are with San Jose given how the Open Cup match went down, they're definitely there.