Austin FC crashed out of CONCACAF Champions League play after losing to Haitian side Violette AC on a 3-2 aggregate.
After dropping the first match 3-0, Josh Wolff’s men expected to overturn that deficit when they returned home to Q2 Stadium in Austin, Texas.
However, Violette pulled off an upset, hanging on to their aggregate lead in the second leg as Austin only managed to score twice.
Though Austin outshot Violette 35-6, the men in green failed to get the job done.
“These results hinge on plays and I don’t know what we had, 30-something shots tonight. It’s disappointing. But there were a lot of opportunities today to right the wrong from the first leg. We weren’t able to do that,” said Austin FC manager Josh Wolff.
The upset is even more stunning when you take into account Violette’s struggles.
Not only had they not played a professional match in over 15 months due to political unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic, but they also only had a matchday squad of only 14 players.
“Their play shows that no matter what difficulty we are facing, we need to keep going. We need to be strong to face these challenges,” said Violette manager Rony Attimy stated after the match.
Wolff went on to say that losses like this are a part of Austin’s learning curve.
They’re only three years into MLS life, and the fact that they were able to qualify for the CCL this early in their existence is a testament to how much they’ve grown as a club.
“We’re two years into our build and we’ve got growth that needs to continue to happen, development that needs to continue to happen.”
He went on to say that they should’ve done better in the first leg and that the organization is “disappointed” with the result.
“We didn’t do well enough in these two games to advance and that’s kind of the long and short. We’ve got to continue to build out depth in our group. In these moments we have to show resiliency when it’s needed. “
“This is disappointing, it will hurt [and] you want to learn from it, that’s the biggest thing. We’re all disappointed.”
Credit: 90min.com
