The Verde Report: Behind the Numbers of Austin FC’s Latest Hot Streak

Austin FC players celebrate the club’s 1-0 win over the Houston Dynamo on April 20 (Courtesy of Austin FC)

All of a sudden, Austin FC is one of the hottest teams in Major League Soccer. After a 1-0 victory over the weekend against the Houston Dynamo, the Verde and Black have now taken nine points out of their last four games, one of just five MLS clubs to do so.

Sebastián Driussi is healthy and scoring goals. Brad Stuver leads the league in saves. Even Emiliano Rigoni has gotten in on the action with his clutch 86th-minute winner in Houston.

“It’s a good group,” head coach Josh Wolff said after Saturday’s win. “We keep improving. We don’t worry about the noise and stuff outside. We know who we are, we know how much we need to put into each game and how precise we have to be with our execution.”

Precision has been, statistically, one of the club’s biggest strengths so far this season. El Tree has scored a total of 12 goals through nine matches, smack in the median among MLS clubs. However, Austin’s expected goal total – a statistic that predicts how many goals a club is likely to have scored, based on the quantity and location of shots taken – is a very pedestrian 7.9, according to FBRef.com. Only Austin’s two Copa Tejas rivals, FC Dallas and the Dynamo, have a lower tally league-wide.

But here’s the big difference. While Dallas’ 7.3 expected goals have led to seven actual goals and Houston’s 7.8 xG has led to eight goals, Austin’s 7.9 xG has produced 12. That discrepancy of 4.1 ranks Austin among the top five clubs in the league in terms of making the most of its chances.

That’s the glass-half-full way of thinking, at least. And Austin FC does have a history of this. Back in 2022, while the club was making its improbable run to the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed and a conference finals appearance, ATXFC led MLS with 13.1 goals above its expected figure. (Driussi was at the heart of this, as several of his 22 goals were of the decidedly “unexpected” variety.)

However, that’s likely exactly the kind of statistic that Austin’s newly-appointed sporting director, Rodolfo Borrell, noticed when he declared that Austin FC “overachieved” in 2022. Generally speaking, that kind of efficiency is not sustainable.

And it’s not just on the offensive side where Austin FC has had good fortune this season. The club has conceded 13 goals despite a total expected-goals-against figure of 16.9. That difference of 3.9 is the second-best figure in the league. Only Minnesota United has dodged more collective bullets than Austin has.

There’s certainly truth to the old adage, “It’s better to be lucky than good.” But that logic is best applied on the micro scale. Individual matches. Individual shots. On the macro, though, across an entire season, luck simply isn’t enough to get the job done. Then again, perhaps there’s more skill involved in this hyperefficient output than we’re giving Austin FC credit for.

We’ll likely learn a lot over the next two match days, as Austin FC takes on the top two teams in the Western Conference. First up is the top-ranked LA Galaxy at Q2 Stadium Saturday afternoon, followed by a trip north of the border to take on the Vancouver Whitecaps on May 4.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect wins from either of those matches. Then again, Austin FC doesn’t seem to matter much about what’s expected.