Austin FC’s debacle in the CONCACAF Champions League

Before the first leg, Austin FC played their cards wrong. For instance the team had only played two games. The second mistake was that the lineups in both games are completely different.

In the game in the Dominican Republic, site was chosen because of political strife in Haiti, was a     4-2-3-1. This formation is more of a defensive set up and to give Violette more of the initiative and then use the counter attack to punish the home team as they felt the pressure of the crowd. In the lineup card Austin FC in Dominican Republic they had: Brad Steuver in goal with Hector Jimenez, Nick Lima, Amro Tarek and Adam Lundkvist in defense, Sofiane Djeffal and Jhojan Valencia as the defensive midfield, Rodney Redes, Diego Fagúndez and Ethan Finlay in the midfield while having Maximiliano Urruti as the lone striker. The main reason why the names of the lineup card are being told is to show the contrast and lack of taking it seriously. In the home leg only Steuver and Lundkvist repeated as starters to show the amount of rotations that the team set forth in the span of a week. Normally there should be a rotation of having three to four players per game, not nine. This rotation showed how overconfident the team felt going into this types of games. It also showed that the gaffer and team were in their first international competition of this level. This mistake happens fairly regularly when MLS teams travel to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In the home leg, the result was 2-0 in Austin FC’s favor but that wasn’t enough to make up for the 3-0 result in the Dominican Republic. The 2-0 result is because Viollette was only able to have fifteen players and four technical members in Austin because of visa problems.

In comparison, LAFC didn’t change their lineups between their game against Portland to the away leg in Costa Rica a game five days away. The next game played only three days away there was a rotation of three players.