Austin FC entered the week with 23 points from 18 games in 2024, an average of 1.28 points per game (Courtesy of Austin FC)
It's been an up-and-down season for Austin FC so far.
The team has fluctuated from the bottom three in the Western Conference to the top three, and this week found itself in the middle of the table in eighth place after consecutive tough away losses to Real Salt Lake and Colorado Rapids.
With the new MLS playoff format implemented last season, 18 of the league's 29 teams (62% for those keeping track) will play some form of postseason soccer, but Austin FC can still claim to be safely in the playoff zone as the second half of the season begins.
From day one, the sentiment around the club, whether it was head coach Josh Wolf, sporting director Rodolfo Borrell or many of the players, consistently reflected a single goal going into the '24 season: to make the playoffs, whatever the outcome.
“We want to get over the top line,” Wolf reiterated Tuesday, “so this season starts with knowing what happened preseason, what happened offseason, what our roster was like and what we decided to do this year from a roster standpoint.”
“I'm very happy with where we are at the halfway point.”
Wolf's pragmatic tendencies aren't for everyone and can come across as self-congratulatory at times, and while Austin FC have never really been a standout in the league this season, the club have also managed to perform well with more regularity than most people expected going into the season.
ATXFC ​​has earned 23 points in their first 18 games for an average of 1.28 points per game. If we extrapolate that pace over the full 34-game season, the Verde and Black would score between 43-44 points.
That's a pretty fortuitous number: Since Austin FC joined MLS in 2021, the average number of points needed to finish in the top nine in the West is exactly 44. Austin has straddled that line with Wallenda-like accuracy.
The club will likely fall below that mark in the month before MLS takes a break for its second League Cup tournament (and may already be below it, depending on the result of Wednesday night's game against LAFC at Q2 Stadium, which took place before this column went to press).
ATXFC ​​not only face stiff competition in the meantime, but are also significantly short-staffed with both Dani Pereira and Julio Cascante off on Copa America duty.
Austin are not the only club to be without key players for international matches but El Tree cannot afford any absences given Wolff's reserve depth is already thinner than other clubs.
The hope is that at the end of August, when the league resumes for the final nine games of the season, Austin FC will not only be fully recovered by then, but reinforcements will have arrived. Club-record signing Osman Bukhari and experienced right-back Mikkel Desler are both eligible to join the ATX squad for the final stages of the season, and Borrell is also keen to make other additions.
A playoff berth for Austin FC means more to Wolf than he does to himself, and the best way to solidify his status as ATX head coach in 2025 for a fifth year would be to achieve the only goal the club has in sight this year.
