Anthony Precourt Has Never Left the Building
On the morning of May 18, 2026, Austin FC issued a press release. Head coach Nico Estévez and sporting director Rodolfo Borrell were both gone before noon. Lead assistant Davy Arnaud was named interim head coach. Two searches — one for a coach, one for a sporting director — opened simultaneously, midseason, with the club sitting at 3 wins, 5 draws, and 6 losses through 14 MLS games.
Anthony Precourt signed the release. He remains the majority owner. He has held that position since Austin FC entered MLS in 2021. The people he hired are gone. He is not.
That arithmetic is not contested. What has gone largely unexamined, across the week's firing coverage, is what it means for a club about to make its third and fourth significant personnel decisions under the same ownership.
The Structure He Built
When Austin FC launched, Precourt organized the front office around a sporting director model. The logic was coherent: place a football expert between ownership and the coaching staff, give that person authority over roster and personnel decisions, and reduce the kind of reactive ownership that produces instability. It was a structure designed, in part, to keep the owner from being the story.
The first sporting director was Claudio Reyna, a hire with genuine soccer credibility. Reyna departed in 2023. Precourt then brought in Rodolfo Borrell, whose résumé included stints at Manchester City, Liverpool, and Barcelona. For a club still working toward its first Western Conference title, it was an ambitious appointment.
Borrell spoke publicly about overhauling scouting and youth development. He made exactly one head coaching hire over three years: Nico Estévez, who had most recently been fired by FC Dallas. The choice drew notice around MLS, in part because Borrell had suggested — in a line that would follow him — that coaches "you wouldn't believe" had expressed interest in the role. Estévez was the only name Borrell got the chance to put forward.
Eighteen Months of Estévez
Estévez's record resisted a clean read. He guided Austin FC back to the MLS Cup Playoffs in his first season and reached a U.S. Open Cup final. Those results were real.
The 2026 season moved differently. Austin fell to Louisville City FC — a USL Championship club — in the first round of the Open Cup. On May 13, the club lost 5-0 at San Diego FC, an expansion side in its first MLS season. Three days later came a 2-1 home loss to Sporting Kansas City, which held last place in the Western Conference at the time.
On the morning of May 18, Precourt fired both men.
His statement read: "We believe this team can compete for a playoff position, and given our results thus far, a change is necessary to achieve our goals of qualifying for the playoffs this year and becoming a consistent winner in this league."
The goal of becoming a consistent winner has appeared in Austin FC communications across multiple coaching and front-office cycles. The statement described the outcome. It did not describe the sequence of decisions — the coaching hire, the roster construction, the scouting overhaul Borrell had promised — that produced it.
The Pattern in the Language
Precourt's statements across the club's five years share a structural feature: they describe what happened without identifying who decided it. The May 18 release announced that "a change is necessary" and that "our ownership group will continue to make the necessary decisions." The passive construction — change is necessary, decisions will be made — places outcomes in the foreground and decision-makers in the background.
This is not unusual for ownership communications in professional sports. What makes it worth examining at Austin FC is the accumulation. Two sporting directors. Two head coaches. Each departure accompanied by a statement describing the result, not the reasoning that produced the hire in the first place.
The Continuity Question
Davy Arnaud has now outlasted two head coaches as an assistant. He is the longest-tenured member of the technical staff. What that reflects about decision-making above the coaching level is difficult to read from the outside — but it is the one continuous thread in a department that has otherwise reset twice.
The sporting director position is open. The head coaching position is open. Precourt will make both hires, whether directly or through whatever structure he builds next. The sporting director model was designed to create distance between ownership and personnel decisions. After two cycles, the distance has not produced stability.
The next hire will be Precourt's third sporting director in five years. Before coverage moves to candidate names and transfer windows, the question worth holding onto is a simpler one: what, if anything, has changed in how the club evaluates and makes those decisions — and who, specifically, is accountable for the answer.