Head Coach, Sporting Director Firings Send Austin FC Back to Drawing Board

We witnessed a proper Red Wedding in Verde land Monday as Austin FC announced the simultaneous firings of head coach Nico Estévez and sporting director Rodolfo Borrell, triggering a complete factory reset of the club’s soccer operations.

In the wake of consecutive calamitous results – a 5-0 loss at San Diego FC, followed by a 2-1 defeat at home to last-place Sporting Kansas City – and with a two-month World Cup break looming at the end of the month, even Estévez himself knew he stood on shaky ground. He acknowledged the moment as the low point of his ATX tenure but lobbied for a chance to right the ship, saying, “I think the evaluation has to be at the end of the season, right? Give time to see if I can get the team in the playoffs.”

Evidently, Austin FC ownership saw things differently, and the decision to move on from Estévez came as no great surprise.

Borrell’s dismissal, on the other hand? Now that was the stunner.

Borrell acted as Austin FC’s front office boss for parts of four seasons, serving as the architect of the club’s roster as well as overseeing its scouting department and youth academy. When he joined ATX from Manchester City in the summer of 2023, the hire was lauded as a coup.

It was Borrell who ultimately pulled the trigger on the firing of Josh Wolff, the club’s first-ever head coach, at the conclusion of the 2024 season. And it was Borrell who infamously cited, among the coaches interested in replacing Wolff, “names that you couldn’t even believe.”

When that eventual name turned out to be Estévez, few could believe that Borrell would tie his fate to a coach who just months earlier was terminated by FC Dallas midway through his third season in Frisco with a 3W-5D-8L record.

Estévez did find success in his first season in Austin, guiding the Verde and Black to the MLS Cup playoffs for just the second time in club history and reaching a U.S. Open Cup final in 2025. But the club took a major step back in 2026, playing to a 3W-5D-6L record as injuries piled up and defensive organization suffered.  

“Some [players] knew how we were supposed to be playing, the formation. Others didn’t,” midfielder Dani Pereira said after the club’s most recent defeat to Kansas City, emblematic of a larger issue.

Estévez’s overly forgiving and optimistic nature also seemed to fall flat within the ATX locker room throughout the club’s struggles, as players would often speak more bluntly on the club’s performances than Estévez seemed willing to.

“We’ve got to be harder on ourselves and be real in what we need to improve. It’s just not good enough,” striker Brandon Vázquez said Saturday.

While Estévez was, clearly, far from flawless in his head coaching capacity, it’s not as if he had championship-level talent at his disposal. Not even close.

And that is where Borrell fell short. Over three years, having spent over $30 million net in transfer fees, Borrell never put together a roster that compared favorably on paper to the upper echelons of MLS. 

Still, Borrell was so deeply involved in reshaping the club’s daily soccer operations, and so deliberate in executing his long-term vision for Austin FC, that it’s hard to believe he wasn’t given the chance to make one more coaching hire. And it means wiping the slate clean comes with a fair amount of risk.

There may very well have been business motivations for Austin FC majority owner Anthony Precourt to blow it all up, in addition to sporting motivations. Case in point: Within hours of the news breaking of Estévez’s and Borrell’s dismissals, multiple Austin FC season ticket holders reported receiving emails from their ticket reps sharing the news of the firings, in an apparent attempt to drum up appetite for ticket renewals.

But appeasing a frustrated fanbase by tossing it its pound of flesh only goes so far. The club has much more work to do in order to fully regain the faith of its supporters, starting with identifying new leadership. By opening both the sporting director and head coach positions at the same time, the club is poised to pursue any number of proven, CEO-type soccer minds available on the market. Names like Jim Curtin, of Philadelphia Union success, and Wilfried Nancy, of Columbus Crew fame, are sure to be floated around Q2 Stadium.

In the meantime, assistant coach Davy Arnaud will take the reins as interim head coach for Austin FC’s final fixture before the World Cup break, a road trip to take on St. Louis City Saturday afternoon. Arnaud, who has proven to be quite the survivor in his Austin FC career, also served as interim head coach for the final game of the 2024 season following Wolff’s dismissal, before rejoining the club on Estévez’s staff.

When Austin FC returns for action in July, however, it will presumably do so under completely new management after the most dramatic moment of change in the club’s short history.

For more Austin FC news and analysis, visit The Austin Chronicle’s Austin FC hub. Sign up for The Verde Report newsletter to get the latest news delivered straight to your inbox, and follow The Verde Report columnist Eric Goodman on X: @goodman.

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