The Interview: Josh Wolff

The Austin FC coach on bringing his team from 12th in the West last season to 2nd this year, his coaching influences, assisting Gregg Berhalter, his history in the U.S.-Mexico rivalry and much more.

Josh Wolff and Austin qualified for the playoffs with a 3-0 win over Salt Lake last Wednesday (Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Josh Wolff was literally one of the first people I ever interviewed in my job at Sports Illustrated. It was the fall of 1996, and he was a 19-year-old forward playing for the U.S. Under-20 men’s national team. I was writing a story on Project-40, the then-new MLS program which was offering major young talents the chance to skip college and go straight into a pro environment while still receiving money that could go toward a college education. It’s kind of wild to think 26 years have passed since then, but I was thinking about it when Wolff and I met up again in Austin, where he has coached Austin FC into an MLS playoff berth in its second season.

The entirety of the written interview below is reserved for paid subscribers. As always, you can still get the entire free audio version of my podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to go for your pods.

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Grant Wahl:

We're here in Austin, Texas, this week, and our guest now is Austin FC coach Josh Wolff. Wolff has Austin in second place in the West as we head into the MLS stretch run. Josh, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the show.

Josh Wolff:

You as well. Thanks for having me.

Grant Wahl:

So we're recording this on Tuesday, coming out Thursday, you've got a game in between on Wednesday against Salt Lake, but let's step back a little bit. Last season was Austin's first in the league. You finished 12th in the West, and you've made a big jump this season. You're currently in 2nd place in the West. That fits the profile of what Atlanta and LAFC did in their second seasons in the league. What in your opinion have been the key factors in Austin's rise this season?

Josh Wolff:

I think there's a number of things that have helped us. The first thing is the ambition of the club to continue to improve and get better. I think philosophically we wanted to come out last year and establish who we were and have an identity, and we put a lot into that, certainly the way that we built out our roster and the types of players, the profiles that we brought in and what we thought we would try to do in the first six months of the season. Obviously, establish an attacking-based team and have certainly an entertainment value to it and be something that the fans were proud of. Obviously, you want to win games as well.

So I think the foundation was laid. There were some struggles along the way from some of it, roster build, injuries and a lack of quality in certain areas, but we added some quality at the midpoint, and Sebastián Driussi was a big addition, obviously. And there were growing pains, certainly growing pains, but the second year, we came in with more leadership and some additions to character and quality, and I think that put us in a space that now we could advance, continue to build off what we had in the first year. But it came much quicker, I think, in the second year, and some of that was because of the failures. I think that put us in a good spot.

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Grant Wahl:

You had a huge 4-1 win against LAFC here on national TV late last month, and I happen to be here now when you've had your first three-game losing streak of the season. What are the most important things for you as a team to get right in the remainder of this stretch run and once the playoffs start?

Josh Wolff:

There's a few things. Obviously, you want to get into the playoffs, which based on points, we're probably already in there, but it has been a difficult run lately. Going to Minnesota, going to Seattle, going to Nashville, these are good opponents, and winning games on the road is challenging. So I think we've shown all year, we're a very good team on the road. We maybe haven't shown that lately. We've been a very strong team at home as well, and we're going to have that opportunity to close out the season, three games at home, one away, and that's our opportunity to really capture momentum again. And coming home to play Salt Lake tomorrow is a big moment. We can win tomorrow, we will check off the goals that we set out for the beginning of the year. Make the playoffs and have a home playoff game. And that's really important to us, and that's what we're going to focus on right now.

Grant Wahl:

If you were going to make a case for Sebastián Driussi to be the MVP of the league, what would that case be?

Josh Wolff:

Well, I think his consistency throughout the entire year from start to today has been the best in the league. I think his qualities of being a playmaker, scoring goals in a variety of ways, his work ethic, certainly the team's performance has been a big part of that. We would talk to him about, in order for anyone in most leagues in this country, for a player to win MVP the team has to achieve something. So he's very much a team player and bought into that, but he's an exceptional talent.

There's many good players in our league. Of course, I'm slightly biased to Sebastián. He's been incredibly strong throughout the season when we've needed the higher quality, and certainly his quality, he's delivered more times than not. And I think he's taken a beating throughout the year, so lately he's probably felt that a little bit more, but that's also part of being one of the prized possessions in the league. So we got four games left, he's got a shot at it and we're going to try to support him as best we can.

Grant Wahl:

I don't know if you remember this, but back in 1996 you were one of the first people I ever interviewed in my job for Sports Illustrated. It was in Richmond around the NCAA Final Four, and you were there training with the Under-20 national team. What did the Josh Wolff of those days, a young man, what did that Josh Wolff think would be your future career path, and was coaching a part of it?

Josh Wolff:

I will start with the latter part, coaching being part of it, probably not. But being a professional soccer player, yes, that was my ambition, that was the idea for me, and making the youth national team, going to an Olympics, setting goals along the way, I think, was important for me. But I think it's important for a lot of players. And obviously, making it to a World Cup, those things were goals that you keep moving along with, but Project-40 was our first taste of modern-day Generation Adidas, and Ben Olsen, myself, Carlos Parra, there were a lot of guys that were part of that first group. And that was our entry into MLS, which was just a couple years old.

So it was a great opportunity, it was the opportunity that we wanted, we made $24,000, and it was the most exciting times of our lives. But that was always my ambition, was to play professional soccer, whether it was in MLS or somewhere else, but that was the door that got us introduced to the game here in the U.S. and we ran with it.

Grant Wahl:

Help with some of our listeners, because what I've found out is we've gotten a lot of new soccer fans in the last 10 years who have no idea what Project-40 means or is. Could you explain what it was?

Josh Wolff:

Well, I think it was the idea of trying to get younger players in a professional environment at a younger age. And we didn't have academy structures. The universities were a pretty normal pathway. There weren't players coming out of high school. So you were foregoing your college career, in essence, and signing a Project-40 contract that put you into one of the MLS teams, and now you're in a professional environment training day-in and day-out. They would provide you with $40,000 to go back to school if that was something that you wanted to pursue or had the time to pursue, but in the end it was Projec-40 and it was destined, and the goal back then was to win the World Cup by 2010, and those were clear messages. I remember sitting in rooms with Sunil Gulati and certainly our U-20s, and hearing this message and idea and of course it's exciting to be part of it and more exciting for the individual. You got to chase your dream of being a professional soccer player.

Grant Wahl:

It's interesting because you talk about Project 2010. Another project that was literally talked about in those days. And sometimes people laugh when they hear about talking about the U.S. winning the World Cup in 2010, but you know what I tell them? It’s that in 2002, the U.S. got to the quarterfinals of the World Cup, arguably outplayed Germany, probably should have had a goal-line handball red card penalty kick situation, and then could have played South Korea in the semifinals of the World Cup. The point being that the U.S. actually was not far from the World Cup final. Does that ever enter your mind when you think about that?

Josh Wolff:

Yes, absolutely. All of that is accurate, and it's exactly right. Of course, you need some good fortunes, but you need a belief, you need a quality, you need a group, and that's what we had and that's what 2002 was, and it was unfortunate. It is a red card handball on the goal line, and it could change the direction of a lot of things, but we played Korea and tied them 1-1. Of course they're a difficult opponent in their home country, but the opportunity could have been there, and it's a frightening thing to think of, but you know. And obviously, where we are today and we have so much more talent now, and obviously players playing at much higher level, but you were right there on the cusp of it, and it was exciting at the moment, but we certainly all talk about when we think back on it.

Grant Wahl:

I spent the last year working as part of a pretty big team on a documentary film project that I know you participated in on the USA-Mexico soccer rivalry, it comes out on Amazon in November, three-part series. And it reminded me, going back through a lot of the US.-Mexico games over the years, that you played a very big role in a lot of them. You scored goals, you set up goals, you were a big part of the 2002 World Cup win against Mexico. When you think back on your role in those games against Mexico today, what stands out to you the most?

Josh Wolff:

Just being impactful. I think, as a player you're trying to be impactful in these games. Some of these are friendlies, some of them are qualifiers and some of them at the World Cup. And I think Bruce always did a great job of making all the players feel like they were going to have a role and have an opportunity, and I think in the World Cup, once it fell that way, it was pretty immediate. And he had voiced it in some of the other games when we played Mexico, like, "Somehow you have their numbers, somehow you have a real ability to make an impact in these games." And that's always something that stuck with me. As an attacker, you want to be impactful, but no matter what the stage is, that's your job as an attacker is to score goals, create goals, penalties and so forth, but be a good teammate. So those opportunities against Mexico fell, I usually took them pretty well and the results are, in the end, what are most important, and I was glad to just contribute.

Grant Wahl:

You mentioned, we were talking a second ago, that teenage Josh Wolff didn't really think much about being a coach someday. At what point did that become something you thought about?

Josh Wolff:

I'd say when I went to Germany to play. A little bit older going there and was looking more for a new experience and something different, and after a second World Cup, so I was there with Gregg Berhalter, we played at 1860, and for me, it's interesting because here I am in MLS and you see foreigners come to our league and it's difficult, it's challenging. So now I'm the foreigner going to another league, and you’ve got to open up to new ideas and be more of a growth mindset, and learn, and there's a humility to it, so I enjoyed going there and seeing what it was like.

The game was taught in a different way as well. There's more detail to it. And I've played for Bob Bradley and Bob Gansler and obviously Bruce Arena, so it's also very good coaches. But I appreciated now a little bit more of the detail. I was probably a little more mature in thinking about the game and watching the game a little more, so I think those things coincided, and the moment I came back from Germany, for me it was my moment to now start pursuing a little bit more of the coaching idea. You're getting older, you realize it's not forever, and that was when the pathway started, I think.

Grant Wahl:

You mentioned some of the coaches you played for: Bob Gansler, Bruce Arena, Bob Bradley, you were an assistant coach with Gregg Berhalter. In what ways did some of those guys influence you specifically in how they approach things that you take a little bit of that in what you do now?

Josh Wolff:

A little bit of everything. Again, I think of Bob Bradley was my first professional coach, and the amount of work and the detail that he would put in, the care and the inner circle that he always spoke of and how important that was. Bob Gansler had a good intensity and always reminded you about the family aspect of what a team is like. Bruce would bring a certain level of intensity and more man management. And being with Gregg was a whole new heightened level for me, because there was so much more of the teaching element and the detail behind it and how you review it and refine it, and as an assistant coach you're obviously in that space a little bit more than you are as a player with those coaches. But a real appreciation for it to help Gregg grow, but for myself to really grow in that space, it was really impactful and really important for me.

Grant Wahl:

Is there any sort of thing you could share about Gregg Berhalter as a coach or a person that would be helpful for these U.S. fans as we look forward to this World Cup coming soon now that he'll be coaching the U.S. team in and will be a defining experience, not the but a defining experience of his coaching career?

Josh Wolff:

Well I think there's a lightheartedness side to Gregg that we don't always get to see. I mean, when we're around him every day, there's different experiences that you share, and he's still quite youthful in moments. And when you're coaching the men's national team, there's obviously a huge amount of outside pressure. Inside the group, though, it's still a young group. And he maintains that connection, I think, extremely well with players of all backgrounds and all ages. And for me, knowing who he was and working alongside him for six, seven years, it is intense, but you have to find time to enjoy it, you have to have time to let loose a little bit, and he does that. I think the fans probably don't always get to see that because, look, it's a business of results and he's always going to be scrutinized and measured based on that, and in all honesty I think the results have been pretty good.

Grant Wahl:

We talk about influences of coaches that you've played for, worked with. What are some things about the way you coach that are very you? Very Josh Wolff?

Josh Wolff:

Yeah, I think there's growth over the first year and certainly this year, I think being a little more aware of what you allow the assistant coaches to bring in, even taking more reflection from the players. We come in with our ideas and it's pretty rigid, and you learn quickly that there is a softness to this. There is a bringing along of the coaches and the players. Everybody has to have a role in this.

So I think the biggest part is communication. As a head coach, there's lots of departments that you have to manage, and you also have to manage each player so the communication piece with players and staff becomes extremely critical because the games are up and down, there are ebbs and flows, there's congestion and there's breaks. So you want to strike relationships, build relationships, because they will be tested. The games will become challenging, and what you have is your bond with the group, and it's extremely important in good and bad times.

Grant Wahl:

How would you describe how MLS has changed since when you played to where it is today?

Josh Wolff:

Well, I think the amount of quality and talent inside the league has changed in the last four or five years. I think the trends of the players that come here, the ages, the profiles that they're coming at. The game-day experience in our league is, to me, is what has set the sport off in this country. I can speak on behalf of what it's like here in Austin at Q2, what the intensity's like, what the energy's like, what the support leading up to the game is during the game, what it looks like on TV. It's incredible to be here, and I think that, along with the quality that you're able to provide on the field, gives a real entertainment value. And I think that's, in the last five years, three years, I mean, it's been much, much different than I certainly recall in 1998 when I first came in.

Grant Wahl:

We're getting old.

Josh Wolff:

Yeah. I am old. I don't know how old you are, you still look young to me, but I'm feeling it each day.

Grant Wahl:

Winding down here with Josh Wolff. Really appreciate the time. You work a lot every day, obviously, with your staff, with your players. I'm also curious, though, to know how you would describe the relationship of working with Claudio Reyna, the sporting director here, and Anthony Precourt, the owner.

Josh Wolff:

Anthony's here today. I mean, he pops in every now and then. Eddie, so a couple of the owners. But with Claudio, our office space is quite close to each other, we have meetings twice a week, typically, part of our leadership team, and also working with the scouting team. So there's plenty of interaction. He's present every day watching training, so we have to have feedback.

There has to be dialogue. We’ve got to maintain how we want to continue to get better, and also just to reflect on what's been happening. He's obviously got a great experience in the sport, a good eye for what's happening inside the building and outside the building, so communication, again, it's quite key, and having Anthony and Eddie, we have barbecues here, we do things as a team, and it's always important to have everybody included as often as possible. And we certainly encourage that. Matthew McConaughey has been out to some of our barbecues.

So it's a great group, and it's a great ownership group, and this is a very strong family. The bond inside this building has been extremely strong all year, and I think that's also why we are in the situation that we are at the end of the year where we can clinch a playoffs and certainly a home playoff game as well.

Grant Wahl:

You talk about the playoffs. You've played in the MLS playoffs, it's one-and-done. You have some players who've played in the MLS playoffs, but you have quite a few who haven't. What will you say to them about how it's different? What it's like?

Josh Wolff:

It's a great question, and we've talked a little bit about it this year, but I was also saying that last year. Down the stretch, we were out of the playoffs, but we were playing teams that were playing in the playoffs, teams that were playing for playoff spot, and I quickly tried to redirect our attention: "Let's make these last home games as good as we can based on building for next year and know we're going to play some opponents that are fighting for their lives or fighting for a position in the playoffs." To try to give a little bit of a feeling of what a playoff game's going to feel like for the Sebastián Driussis.

These guys have played in Champions League games, they've played in big games, but the playoffs are just a different animal. They're reffed differently, they look differently, and they become single-elimination, so we've talked about it a little bit last year and of late, we've certainly put it on the radar. But we want to keep focusing on each opponent, the next opponent as much as we can, and when the playoffs arrive hopefully be in a good space ready to go, but it's an exciting time. The one-and-done makes it really interesting, so we want to play at home. That's the goal right now.

Grant Wahl:

You mentioned Matthew McConaughey, so I’ve got to ask. You got any good stories involving him?

Josh Wolff:

No, I think he's a very authentic, genuine guy. When he gets around us at a barbecue or he's at the stadium before some of our matches, he's quite jovial. He's quite passionate about Austin, which I think is who he is and what he's always been about. But we're fortunate to have him on our ownership group, as is the rest of our owners. They're fantastic human beings.

Grant Wahl:

What do you see as the next step for this club to take?

Josh Wolff:

Well, I think the playoffs are one thing, and now what can we make of that in the playoffs? And the first thing that I always say is that if you can get in that door and get a chance, anything can happen. And it's single-elimination, as you said, and you want to finish as high as possible so you can grab as many home games as you can if you can progress. But beyond that, right now, I don't think too much. Obviously, we’ve got to continue to improve this roster, and whatever happens this year, you'll turn the page quickly and start thinking about 2023. And there's changes coming next year. Leagues Cup is coming, we're playing against Mexican competition, the Open Cup'll start up again, more opportunity to make Champions League. So it'll be a robust schedule and we'll need more bodies, we'll need more quality. Just like everybody in this league, we want to keep getting better.

Grant Wahl:

Josh Wolff is the head coach of Austin FC. Thanks for coming on the show.

Josh Wolff:

Thank you for having me.