Austin FC’s CCL debut ended with a nightmarish 3-0 loss to Haiti’s Violette AC

The club’s first continental match couldn’t have gone worse

Austin FC’s CONCACAF Champions League debut couldn’t really have gone much worse.

Facing another CCL debutant in Violette AC of Haiti Tuesday night, the Texas club fell to a calamitous 3-0 first-leg defeat. Miche-Naider Chéry powered two first-half headers home before a nearly unimaginable own goal from Amro Tarek early in the second half took the game into unforeseen territory.

The situation seemed to promise good things for Austin. They were one of MLS’s best teams in 2022, and with a deep, experienced roster, there was plenty of room to rotate and still hold high expectations. Josh Wolff made nine changes from the team that beat CF Montréal 1-0 over the weekend, but every starter for Austin had at least one full pro season under their belt. MLS veterans like Diego Fagundez (along with goalkeeper Brad Stuver, one of the two holdovers), Hector Jiménez, and Nick Lima were all in the fold.

On top of that, political unrest in Haiti saw CONCACAF relocate the game from Port-au-Prince to Estadio Cibao FC in the Dominican Republic. Cibao FC, incidentally, is the team Violette had knocked off to secure their place in the round of 16. No Haitian team had ever won a CCL match since the the region’s top club tournament changed to its larger format.

Instead, things started poorly and never really got better for Los Verdes. A 13th minute cross from the electric Roberto Louima — who made light work out of Jiménez on Austin’s right flank all night — picked out Chéry with an in-swinging cross, and the 25-year-old was left unmarked by Lima or the late-arriving Tarek, heading Violette into the lead.

Violette’s recipe seemed pretty simple: stay in a compact, 4-4-2 mid-block scheme, allow Austin easy possession but deny space between the lines, and steer all counters towards Louima on the left.

With Austin never really solving the puzzle, it was little surprise that the same tactical pattern ended up leading to a second Violette goal.

Jiménez was stuck trying to prevent Louima from cutting into the box, and with Jhojan Valencia taking forever to get into position so they could team up on the winger, Violette took advantage. Louima shimmied before slipping the ball to overlapping left back Denilson Pierre. From the endline, Pierre’s cross found Chéry with a more difficult task on his hands, as Tarek and Lima were closer to him, but the big man simply overpowered Tarek to make it a brace.

Austin got into the locker room down 2-0, and Wolff opted to show some trust in his guys to solve the problem ahead of them. No panic, no “coach makes five substitutions at halftime” headlines. Think a few tactical pointers and a stern reminder that this team is a lot better than what they showed for 45 minutes on the turf in Santiago de los Caballeros.

Whatever good that did was undone by a disaster that flummoxed Fox’s broadcast team, such was its sheer unlikeliness.

Once again, the move started with Louima, with Chéry bringing play over to the left to find Violette’s star attraction. Louima danced into the box before taking a shot that Lima could only deflect rather than block to safety. The looping rebound floated into Chéry’s path, and that’s where Tarek’s miseries began.

First, after having been in a reasonable defensive position as Louima sized Lima up, Tarek lost track of Chéry, and he followed the arc of the ball rather than finding his mark until it was too late. Chéry was denied a hat trick by what was frankly an astounding save from Stuver, who despite going full-speed to his left managed to shoot his right arm out in time to somehow prevent a goal.

Spare a thought for how Stuver must have felt, flat on his back and trying to regain his feet, when Tarek adjusted to the rebound. The center back panicked, and needlessly: Chéry’s attempt to get to the ball saw him slip and fall. He never would have gotten there, Tarek could have turned upfield and walked out of the danger.

Instead, a catastrophe. Tarek shaped to blast the ball into the stands, but instead unleashed a cracking volley that flew right over the prone Stuver, making it 3-0 in Violette’s favor and leaving Austin with a mountain to climb in the second leg.

After the match, Wolff said one of the only things you can say as a coach after such a shambolic defeat. “Really disappointed with the result, with the performance to a lot of degrees, but I’m gonna take responsibility. I did not get these guys wound up enough to compete and understand what this was going to be about.”

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