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Live (to tape) from the U.S. Open Cup Championship match, Jimmy Maas and Juan Diego Garcia talk with original Austin FC play-by-play announcer Adrian Healey, chat about the return of the tifo to the supporters’ section and the history made Wednesday night at Q2.
¡Vamos Verde! is a listener-supported production of KUT & KUTX Studios in Austin, Texas. You can help make this podcast happen by donating at supportthispodcast.org.
The full transcript of this episode of ¡Vamos Verde! is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
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Jimmy Maas [00:00:36] Welcome back to Vamos Verde. I’m Jimmy Maas.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:00:38] And I’m Juan Diego Garcia. And we.
Jimmy Maas [00:00:39] We are taping this live to tape. That’s not live, but you get my point.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:00:45] Live-ish.
Jimmy Maas [00:00:45] Yeah, we’re at Q2 Stadium in one of the radio booths. And we just witnessed Nashville SC beat Austin FC in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup trophy. Competition championship final. I think the word you’re looking for is final, Jimmy. It’s been printed all around here all night for whatever reason.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:01:11] Yeah, I mean, you could literally look down and just read it.
Jimmy Maas [00:01:13] Yeah, well, so the Austin FC hosted the US Open Cup championship and did not win. Although I will say the performance was not maybe indicative of the result. They did play well. I think they did play. Well, yeah, but the difference being Austin FC missed a penalty kick and Nashville made theirs.
Jimmy Maas [00:01:35] And at this level, those very fine margins, that’ll kill you.
Jimmy Maas [00:01:39] And so did get chippy near the end with the referee very active in the last few minutes in stoppage time, but even red carding, Sam Surge, who scored the penalty kick for Nashville. I don’t know if Austin FC is gonna lower their head over this, because in order to lose a final, you actually have to run the gauntlet and make a final.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:02:02] Right, and Brad Stuber said something very similar after the match.
Brad Stuver [00:02:05] Playing in a final probably wasn’t on anybody’s radar at the beginning of this year. I don’t think anybody would have said this Austin FC team was gonna play in a finals. So getting to a final is a big achievement. It hurts like hell that we lost it, but we still have one objective left and that’s making playoffs. We have the opportunity to clinch that at home in front of our fans and we can take the pain and the anger that we have from tonight and carry that into Saturday to make sure that we achieve that goal, as well.
Jimmy Maas [00:02:33] And yes, Austin FC is one result away from officially qualifying for the Major League Soccer Playoffs. I believe they are still probably two results away from establishing themselves in the top seven so they don’t have to play that play-in series between the eight and nine teams. So still a lot to play for for Austin FC with just two home, three games and two home games left on the season. And we are at Q2 Stadium in a broadcast booth where once upon a time. This whole row was haunted by Adrian Healy who was our guest today. Adrian came to Austin to be the television voice of Austin FC for local TV. All the while he was keeping his other job at ESPN where he was calling international games. He has since maintained that. He is calling La Liga games. If you stream those games on ESPN plus you are likely to be visited by Adrian. Via Valencia or Barcelona.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:03:35] Jimmy, you are aware that Adrian is alive, right? Using a lot of like death imagery.
Jimmy Maas [00:03:40] Well, it’s October. Nice. He actually is doing all those games from Central Austin.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:03:47] Believe it or not.
Jimmy Maas [00:03:49] So here he is.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:03:50] Modern technology.
Jimmy Maas [00:03:50] Yes. And I should mention he is, he has since become a coworker of ours. He returns to his music DJ roots, joining us over at KTX. He also works on KUT.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:04:02] Occasionally he’s my way more famous than me backup.
Jimmy Maas [00:04:05] It’s wild, right? It really is. To have your backup to be more famous than you.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:04:09] People look at me really funny when I say, oh yeah, Adrian’s filling in for me today.
Jimmy Maas [00:04:12] Yeah. And they’re like, wait, he, as you mentioned before, it’s a pain point for you. He has a Wikipedia page, you don’t.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:04:20] Right. Apparently Wikipedia does not appreciate us writing our own pages. So they just keep taking it down.
Jimmy Maas [00:04:27] Here he is. Austin soccer commentator. Austin play-by-play man.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:04:35] Austin ghoul, apparently.
Jimmy Maas [00:04:37] Ghoul and international play-by-play superstar and local radio music DJ, Adrian Healy. So first off, how in the hell did you get to Austin? You don’t sound like us.
Adrian Healey [00:04:57] Well, I came to Austin once in the mid 90s, early to mid 90’s when I was already in music radio as a radio DJ. Came to a South by Southwest and just had an absolute blast. Loved the city. It was totally alien to me. It was like nothing I’d ever seen because I was in Boston at the time. And just had always had it in the back of my mind that Austin was a really cool city, but I’d never had the opportunity to go back because even though it. Traveled a lot covering soccer. If it was Texas, it was Dallas or Houston. And that became my impression of Texas, which, you know, it’s very different. It’s not the same thing. No, no, they shouldn’t even be in the same state, should they? But the opportunity came up at the right time. It was just one of those kind of synergy things where, you had been in. Connecticut for a long time, working for ESPN for a longtime. And, you know, had a couple of mutual acquaintances who would sort of become a part of the Austin FC organization. I was like, oh, really interesting what they’re doing down there. And just had a a couple of casual conversations and which very quickly became sort of, hey, you are you at the stage in your life and career where you consider making a change. And my wife and I, to be honest, were not ever thinking we would. We would come live somewhere like here, but it just, all the pieces fell into place very quickly. And we’re like, well, if we’re gonna go and live anywhere else in this country, then Austin, you know, it has everything.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:06:37] Classic tale of moving to Austin. You come here once you fall in love and you decide to.
Adrian Healey [00:06:43] Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, I wouldn’t have really done it for any other situation. I mean, if any other team in MLS had asked me to sort of move and leave, I would not have done it. But there was something about Austin, the city, something about the club coming into existence for the first time that I thought would be incredibly special and cool to be, to be sort of have a front row seat for, so.
Jimmy Maas [00:07:07] You have this, you have a very long, distinguished American soccer broadcasting career. Did you do this when you lived in England? I tried, I tried. But somehow music hit first.
Adrian Healey [00:07:23] Music hit first, yeah. It wasn’t for want of trying. In fact, my very first broadcasting experience was as a, believe it or not, a 12 or 13 year old. And I lived in a small town in England called Morborough, which is very close to a slightly bigger town called Swindon. And Swindle had… A local, what was called hospital radio station back in those days, all volunteer. And it’s exactly as it sounds. I think they still have them in various towns in England. They are local radio stations that just broadcast to people in hospitals.
Jimmy Maas [00:08:03] Yes.
Adrian Healey [00:08:06] Sure, yeah, they can’t. I want to change this thing. No, I don’t know how much else to do. But they broadcast the local professional team, Swindon Town, and had their games. And I, my dad happened to know someone who was involved in that. And I’d always sort of expressed an interest in commentating. Even at that age, I used to kind of practice, pretend games and commentating, and it was like, oh. It seemed like something impossibly glamorous and something I’d love to do. And my dad mentioned this to his friend. He’s like, oh, I haven’t come by because they used to broadcast Swindon games with like six or seven people doing them. And they would all take 10 or 15 minutes of the game each and then the next person would come into the chair. So they actually put me on the air as a 12 or 13 year old. Calling the game. How’d you do? Well, they loved it because, hey, I had a really high-pitched voice being at that age. And I actually went over their dilapidated equipment pretty well. So they liked it. Nice. So they invited me back a few times. So that was my first taste of it. Hospital radio. Hospital radio, Swindon Town. Actually, the first game I ever did, Swindontown 8-Berry-0. So they also thought somehow it was a good luck charm because literally the first time I. Sat down to call a game, I was calling all these goals that were being rattled in by my home team. So. Did you call all eight or? No, no, because again, I only got 15 minutes, but I think I scored two and three in that time.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:09:35] My question is, if your voice was closer to what we’re hearing now, would this even be your career at this point?
Adrian Healey [00:09:42] You know, I think I’ve wanted it to be, I always wanted it be. And I don’t know if it would have become had I stayed in the UK, because at that time there was so little opportunities to actually become a commentator. A, there was hardly any televised soccer. We’re talking late 80s here as I got out of college and there was very few people able to do it. Radio had slightly more opportunity and that’s what I was kind of focused on to start off with, which is just getting in on the radio side. So I tried, I went and did a post-grad in radio communications. And even with that, I kind of, I was knocking on the door, getting close. I did a little bit of work in Birmingham in the late 80s. More hospitals. No, more. I did. You moved on to nursing homes too. Oh, good. Moving on up in the world. That’s going to be when I come around full circle. Nursing home really. I’ll handle announcements. So yeah, but I had this other kind of passion that was music and kind of that became, that kind of took over, especially once I came to the US in the early 90s and there were a lot more opportunities in music, especially in a town like Boston where I landed. And so. That was the path I followed initially.
Jimmy Maas [00:11:09] So Swindon, coincidentally, like 60 miles from my birthplace, Oxford. Yeah, yeah. And ish. Closer actually. Yeah, okay. And then did you go direct to college and then Boston, or how was, what’s the route after that?
Adrian Healey [00:11:25] There was a little bit of time where I was working actually in educational travel, but I did have a microphone in my hand. I was a tour director for a company called EF who used to send groups of American and Canadian high school kids and their teachers over to Europe. And I would be the guy on the bus with a mic in my hands like leading them around Europe for a two-week tour, like seven cities.
Jimmy Maas [00:11:53] Yeah, two weeks. It’s like intensive improv training really is. Coming up with facts. Well, especially when you go to. Facts-ish about places that they have questions about.
Adrian Healey [00:12:04] Especially when you’ve never been there yourself before. There was more than one occasion where I had to lead a guided tour around somewhere like Heidelberg Castle where I’d never actually been.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:12:14] So. So it would have been what, pre-smartphones. Oh yeah, totally. You could probably just make it up on the spot and people wouldn’t be able to check it until they were alive.
Adrian Healey [00:12:22] Sometimes you’d get really good history teachers though who were with the kids and they knew. And call you out right away. Quite right. And they would jump in. But anyway, I was doing that for, doing that a couple of years post-college and just kind of trying to figure things out. Finding your way. Yeah, yeah. And then working for that company at that time, and now this is when there was some very lax or lax-er. Immigration and visa rules. At that time, they used to bring four or five Brits over to the U.S. Every year to help market and sell those tours to U. S. High school teachers. Because that was their business model. They sold the tours to the teachers. The teachers sold them onto the kids. They got a free trip out of it. So they thought it was a good idea to bring a few Brits over each year to get on the phones with these teachers and start, you know, saying, hey, do you want to do that? So I was one of those. People picked, and that’s how I ended up in Boston. So, but once here, then things sort of, things started. Much as so often is the case, people often don’t intend to come here, but then opportunities. Yeah. It is, yeah, the oldest cliche in the book, but opportunities do occur here. And that’s what happened with me on the radio. And you’re fine.
Jimmy Maas [00:13:42] And you found your lane in Alternative Rock.
Adrian Healey [00:13:44] Found my lane in Alternative Rock in the sort of, yeah, 92, 93, 94. And then, and then- Good time for that. Yeah, brilliant time, especially in a city like Boston. It was amazing. You don’t say. That was one, yeah. And that was when I came to South by Southwest. I think it was 94 that I came down here. And then the World Cup happened in 94. Of course I was- No part of the soccer industry. There barely was a soccer industry at that point. So I was there as a fan. And then the league came into being in 1996. Go on. Let me have it in.
Jimmy Maas [00:14:25] 1994, as a soccer fan, what was the television scene like for you as someone who was just seeking it out in 1994?
Adrian Healey [00:14:36] Well, it was brilliant in some respects, Jimmy, because there wasn’t much product on TV at all at that time. This was the very, very embryonic years of the Premier League. Games weren’t being shown widely. So there wasn’t actually much soccer or football to dig your teeth into at all on TV. And then, of course, the World Cup is here and everyone, and then everything is getting televised. So it was actually brilliant. I mean, it was a- It was still the biggest kind of sea change moment for the sport in this country, I think. Not only from it being televised the way it was, but actually getting to go to games in person.
Jimmy Maas [00:15:20] And then at that point, you saw people were looking. There was interest in finding people that knew something about the sport. And Adrian Healy has resume Will Travel.
Adrian Healey [00:15:34] And again, luck plays a part because I just happened to be in one of the 10 cities that had the first MLS clubs attached to it. Boston, they had the New England Revolution. So from day one of them announcing their arrival, I was knocking on the door trying to get involved. I had a full-time gig at the time on the air, doing a midday show in an alternative rock station. So it was like- Why do you wanna do this? I’m like, well, actually, I have this background. I know a lot about the sport. I think I could broadcast it well. So it actually took a couple of years to get in there. A, they didn’t have any English language radio broadcast for the first two years. They had Spanish and they had TV. I wasn’t even considering TV at that point, to be honest. I was like, I’ve no experience in TV.
Jimmy Maas [00:16:22] That’s interesting. Cause it is effectively radio. It’s just, you know, the cameras on the players doing stuff and you’re just.
Adrian Healey [00:16:29] No, exactly.
Jimmy Maas [00:16:30] But it’s it, but it is. You do three standups, the beginning, halftime. Yeah, you hardly aren’t.
Adrian Healey [00:16:34] Yeah, you’re hardly on camera at all as a player. It is quite a different skill set, I believe, but or a different method of commentating. But at that time I was all focused on radio. So what I did was just get involved with the team and actually invite players to be interviewed on my show. I would give away tickets to the games on my midday music show, much to the- Amusement and puzzlement. And my program director at the time, he was like, what’s this gotta do with playing Nirvana and smashing pumpkins? I’m like, well, you know, it’s new. It’s soccer. I always sold it. Soccer’s the most rock and roll sport there is. So that’s our tie in. Alexi Lalas was on that New England Revolution team back in- Sure. Back when he was still releasing records. And he was, yeah, yeah. Well, he still is, I think, isn’t he? Is he? Yeah, well I think so. But anyway, he made a big deal of being a musician in Boston. He did, he did.
Jimmy Maas [00:17:35] His CDs made their way to Austin as well.
Adrian Healey [00:17:37] That was kind of my tie in as well. I had to bother the show a lot. And so then eventually they did get an English language deal. I think it was in year three of the team in 98. So that was, that was when I managed to finally start broadcasting the sport. So again, lucky. I mean, I just, yes, you gotta be persistent. But yeah, had I been in, I don’t know, Atlanta at that time when they didn’t have a team, yeah, probably wouldn’t have happened.
Jimmy Maas [00:18:04] He’d still be spinningrecords or playing files. However, whatever DJs like to think of their job today.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:18:14] We’ll be back with more from Adrian Healy after this break.
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Jimmy Maas [00:19:14] From there, you got the attention of ESPN, which kind of then provided another seat change for your career at that point. Would that be correct?
Adrian Healey [00:19:23] I think it would be inaccurate. I said they discovered me. Again, it was, I had to knock very loudly on their door. I became aware. I’d been doing the revolution a few years. I had made the switch from radio to TV about three years in. So now we’re now into 2000. I’d done TV for a couple of years and I became a aware, obviously I was aware of ESPN being down the road, but I also became aware of this part of ESPM, which is ESPN International, where they… Broadcast a lot of soccer games. Didn’t know anything about it. Started sort of reaching out, sending tapes. And one of those classic sort of knocked on the door a lot, didn’t get anywhere. They were very, you know, they were like, oh yeah, we like your stuff, but yeah, don’t need anyone at the moment. Didn’t, yeah, had almost not given up, but I actually hadn’t kind of… Pursued it. Pursue it, but yeah, I tried less and I was like, all right, well, if it’s gonna happen, you know, I’ve done what I can. They know I’m here if they have a need. And of course, after six months without contact, I get a phone call out of the blue. I’m actually on my way to DC doing a revolution game down there. And I think I took training. I got a call out the blue from the guy in charge at ESPN International, Norm. Norm Whitehurst, I’ll always remember him because he was like… Are you still interested in doing games? I’m like, sure. He’s like, well, we are short next week. Can you come and do a Barcelona-Celta Vigo game? And we’ll just treat that as your audition. So the following week, I found myself down there doing a game, but the twist was, he was like, yeah, and actually, we don’t need a play-by-play game. We’re fine for that. We need you to be the analyst. And the guy who’s normally an analyst, Tommy Smith. I don’t know if you remember him, famous Irish guy. We’re gonna have him do play-by-play. So this was my first taste of ESPN thing, doing a Barcelona-Celta Vigo game, a game that meant nothing because it was the end of the season. And in a different role, so.
Jimmy Maas [00:21:39] That began a, you know, it wasn’t contiguous, but you know an on-again, off-again relationship for 20 plus years.
Adrian Healey [00:21:48] Yeah, I mean, absolutely, again, very slow because I did that one game and then I think three months later, I got invited back to do two more games, Champions League, this time actually doing play-by-play. And then they said, well, would you fancy doing a Serie A Italian game once a week, driving down? And so I was still living in Boston at this time, still doing what I was doing. So yeah, started to drive down to Connecticut and do one game a week Italian. And then that became two and then. And then actually at the end of the first year, they were like, okay, I think we have enough to offer you a full-time gig if you’re interested. I’m like, yes, where do I sign? But to be honest, Jimmy, for many, many years, especially early on in my ESPN career, I was just working for ESPN International. So you would not have known in this country I was ever doing games. I was doing Spanish league, Italian league, Brazilian, Dutch, Scottish, but all of it going. Overseas, so English speaking countries around the world. In Australia and New Zealand, we had quite the following, but and in the Caribbean a little bit, sometimes in Africa, but in the US, almost nothing.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:23:02] So you were aiming for MLS and you ended up commentating on some of the biggest European leagues in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Funny how that happens.
Adrian Healey [00:23:12] Yeah, I, you know, I had had a really good grounding in MLS and had to had six years with the revolution, but had never stopped kind of obviously following the game at the very highest level very closely. And then actually to get to commentate on particularly the Spanish league and actually the Italian league at that time was amazing as well. So that was brilliant.
Jimmy Maas [00:23:36] In this process, do you get to, I mean, I’m sure you got to meet, hang out with. Shmoos. You know, work with some of the biggest names in the game. Certainly, how was that going from like, I mean just 10 years prior, you were kind of just a guy and now you’re the guy with. Other big names in the industry.
Adrian Healey [00:24:04] Yeah, it didn’t, it’s weird. I always felt like we were kind of like this, you know, soccer as a whole, when you look at ESPN as an entity, soccer is sort of in quite a small dark corner of the enterprise. So it’s not like we’re, you don’t, then add to the fact that we were international, not even domestic. It’s like almost nobody knew who we were. What really changed that was actually. The World Cups and ESPN’s treatment of the World Caps in Germany, then in South Africa in 06 and 10. I felt that was like a big, a big kind of point of inflection. And that’s when we started to get sort of more involvement with some of the bigger names in the game. In this country, but it wasn’t like we were rubbing shoulders with these guys. Remember, we were stuck away in a broom closet in Connecticut and it was only when we started doing the bigger tournaments, that sort of interaction.
Jimmy Maas [00:25:04] How is Taylor Twilman?
Adrian Healey [00:25:08] Well, he was a brilliant goalscorer. I will say that. He, when I was doing the Revolution, that’s when he broke through in 2002 as a young forward. And he was one of the best strikers, you know, we’d ever had in the game at that point. And then, you know obviously he became a broadcaster almost by accident. He’ll openly admit he wasn’t actually looking to do that. And then.
Jimmy Maas [00:25:34] Someone just caught him mid rant on a mic and next thing you know.
Adrian Healey [00:25:40] Exactly. Story made for Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, he’s gone on to be kind of the preeminent analyst really in US soccer. He’s done extraordinarily well. And I got to spend a lot of time with him on the road ultimately because we did MLS games nationally sort of traveling all over the country for seven or eight years, so.
Jimmy Maas [00:26:06] Certainly, yeah. You came to Austin after this period to work with Austin FC. I know that you were not part of the Apple TV package and so that sort of changed. Right. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve been doing since for everybody that may not subscribe to the right streaming service?
Adrian Healey [00:26:32] Well, I should say we knew when we came here that it was kind of a short lease because we knew Austin only had the local broadcast deal for the first two years and there was nothing hidden about that. We knew that, okay, we’ll make this move. We’ll do it for two years. Then we’ll see what happens next. We weren’t too worried about it. I always, even during that time, maintained my ESPN relationship and did. Games on a part-time basis for them remotely. So I knew I could go back in that direction if I needed to. The end of 22 became apparent that Apple were coming in. And I was a part of the Apple deal initially in year one. But in a way, Jimmy, it felt like stepping backwards because to be frank, one of the big attractions at this stage of my career of coming down to Austin and working for Austin was everything was here. I wouldn’t have to get on plane every weekend and go around the country, which was great. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, but I was kind of ready. Not to do that every weekend. And then the Apple deal coming in kind of sent me back to that world where I was here in Austin, but I was having to go up to Kansas City or Seattle or somewhere that involved getting on a plane. Most weekends. So I did it for a year. And then at the end of that year, I was like, okay, our personal situation was that we were ready to kind of take a break. My wife and I have always. Loved traveling and we promised ourselves when the time was right, we would go and do it. Kids are out of the house. Kids are outta the house, go see the world. Go off to Southeast Asia is actually where we went for a lot of the. See all these.
Jimmy Maas [00:28:17] See all these places that you’ve been talking about.
Adrian Healey [00:28:19] Yeah. From your.
Jimmy Maas [00:28:21] Closet in Connecticut.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:28:23] Yeah. From a closet in Connecticut with a dream. To see it in real life. Another story made for Hollywood.
Adrian Healey [00:28:31] Excuse me. So most of 2024 was spent as a complete break. However, ESPN were always like, okay, when you’re ready to come back, we can put you fully back on the Spanish La Liga, which I did towards the end of last year from Spain. We actually spent three months in the fantastic city of Valencia. Just kind of lapping it up and experiencing life there. Sure.
Jimmy Maas [00:28:58] But if it weren’t for 2016’s Brexit decision, we’d still be there.
Adrian Healey [00:29:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we went in thinking, yeah, if this, we really like this, it works out and I can work from here clearly, then maybe we stay. It didn’t work out that smoothly from, as you intimated a sort of political reason. Basically it became very difficult to be able to continue to. Live and work in Spain. Now, if we just wanted to live, we could have done that, but it was the work part that was a bit of an issue. So we decided to, all right, we’ll shelve that idea for a couple of months and we’ll come back. It’s, you know, to have the ability to come back in Austin and make this our home again was, yeah, a pretty good consolation. So we decide to do that at the end of 24, I’d come back and. Kind of jump straight back into the ESPN world remotely. Of course, all of this is aided by the fact that you can now broadcast any game from pretty much anywhere if you’ve got good internet, which, you know, that’s changed. That’s changed so much. Yeah.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:30:14] As a guy who like grew up in, you know, an era where that might not have even been a dream to now doing it as a profession, how does that sort of rapid advancement in technology that allows you to do a job from Austin, how does feel for you?
Adrian Healey [00:30:31] I mean, there’s two ways to look at it. I mean it is professionally, it’s amazing to be able to do that. I mean even back in just pre-COVID, this wouldn’t have been a thing and they wouldn’t of even counted as simple. Like, no, if you’ve got a broadcast game, we want you here. Is it better to be at an event? Of course it is. It goes without saying as a broadcast, you wanna be. At the stadium, I mean, it’s part of the kind of storytelling that you do is everything that’s around you. Yeah, the atmosphere.
Jimmy Maas [00:31:06] Yeah, the atmosphere, things that the fans are doing that are off camera.
Adrian Healey [00:31:09] Yeah, and even the players want me, you broadcast remotely, you don’t get any special camera feeds. You see only exactly what the viewer is seeing at the same time. So there’s no extra sort of bells and whistles. So yeah, it’s a double-edged sword I guess, Juan, is the answer to the question. I love the fact that it enables me to do what I’m now doing from Austin because that wouldn’t have been possible even six, seven years ago. Broadcasters being who they are, they now realize they can broadcast a lot more games, a lot cheaper without any sort of travel costs. So that’s kind of become a standard in the industry. A lot of broadcasting is done that way, especially when you’re talking high volume, high volume stuff like a lot of college basketball and baseball I think is done that way a lot soccer. Soccer always was remotely. I mean, for me sitting in a broom closet in Connecticut calling a game from Madrid or.
Jimmy Maas [00:32:10] Yeah, I was always baffled at how Andres Cantor could be calling every single final goal of every single game, but then I realized, Oh, I mean, Jimmy,
Juan Diego Garcia [00:32:20] they have eight of them. There’s eight different Andres Cantor and they just send them to different games. They just never show them at the same time. So you’re never like onto them.
Jimmy Maas [00:32:29] Also, nice coda on this is your return to Austin means you get to go back to rock and roll radio, which you’re doing here at KTX, which I’ve heard is listened to in a lot of hospitals.
Adrian Healey [00:32:44] Still looking to break into the nursing home segment, but that’s, you know, we’re working on that. It’s the same people too. It’s same folks. They all followed him from Sendon. Adrian? Yeah, which has been brilliant. I mean, you don’t music has never stopped being a big part of my life. Even when I was a, was a was a full-time soccer guy, um, never stopped sort of loving music, but obviously hadn’t done it on the air for a long, long time. And. To be able to come to a city like this and do it at a station like this is just, it’s brilliant because they are fewer and far between, you know, the stations, um, like KTX, um not many of them left around the country.
Jimmy Maas [00:33:27] One more thing about your broadcasting career. Can you confirm or deny that there’s a feud between you and John champion?
Adrian Healey [00:33:36] Cannot confirm or did I know he’s, he’s he’s a, I mean, John champion. I kind of grew up listening to it’s funny. I’ve, I’ve got to meet some of my, um, so my aisles and heroes in the commentary world and they always say, never meet your, never meet your heroes, but for me it was, it was actually great to, uh, be able to work a couple of tournaments with him. I mean you never actually worked together cause you’re doing the same role, but you’re part of the same team.
Jimmy Maas [00:34:00] Sure. But it’s, you’re part of the same team. You’re presented in the same pack. No, and he’s, he’s brilliant.
Adrian Healey [00:34:06] And, um.
Jimmy Maas [00:34:07] Juan and I are actually in two different closets right now.
Adrian Healey [00:34:11] Ian dark is another guy I grew up listening to it and I’ve actually got to spend, I think more time with him than any other fellow commentator from, from the UK. So, um, so I actually think it is good to meet your idols for me. It’s been, it’s been it’s, been a good thing. Um, guys I learned a lot from and, uh, tried to copy in many ways.
Jimmy Maas [00:34:32] Uh, Austin FC, you’ve seen this team from its infancy from it’s, I mean, when it was, uh, I, I. When it was basically nothing to what it is now, this is a year that it’s turning out to be, you know, I don’t want to jinx anything for anyone, but it’s turned out to be a pretty good one, which I don’t know if people saw coming at the beginning of the year, you know, hope Springs eternal at the start of the season. But I, yeah, I think this is about as good a. Regular season results as anyone probably could have hoped for. I don’t know what, what that means as far as like, how do you see it in like where it started, where it’s at, you know, in this five year journey.
Adrian Healey [00:35:11] Yeah. I mean, as we sit here now, it feels like a little bit of 2022 redux, you know, albeit they’re playing a very different style of football than they did back then. And yeah, it was a style of football, I think at the start of the year, you know, was, was it was conservative by nature. And I think probably that needed to happen. Given the, given the two prior years and 23 and 24, I think, I think Nico Estavez came in and said, okay, we’re going to get the defensive side sorted out first. And they’ve done a really good job with that almost from day one. And they, you know, they’ve stayed in games. What, what took slower to unfold was the, was the attacking sort of schemes and mentalities and yeah, that, that that it’s funny. I mean, a lot of coaches have tried to bridge that divide between. Entertaining, wild, thrilling soccer and, and winning soccer. And it’s not always possible to bridge that divide. And I think the focus has very much been on winning, which is fair enough. It probably had to be, but it hasn’t always been, hasn’t always been great to watch. But in the end, if it, if, if it gets you to the playoffs and, um, and wins trophies, then, uh, yeah, no fan is going to be complaining. That’s for sure. And I’m sure there’s a much.
Jimmy Maas [00:36:37] Maligned pragmatists are sobbing into their trophy cabinet, right? As they polish all of the silver that they’ve won with their, uh, conservative. Yeah, I’m sure.
Jimmy Maas [00:36:47] Yeah, I’m sure the style of football. I mean, you’re LaLiga that you do. La Liga games, the Real Madrid constantly will, you know, go look at our trophy case over Barcelona who plays a very esthetically pleasing style, but they don’t win champions league nearly as often. So,
Adrian Healey [00:37:05] yeah. And that, you know, I mentioned the 2022 side, which was a thrill ride. And I, I, as a, someone had a front row seat to that. I was, that was, that team was just, but, you know, they would win four, three, they would lose four, three and they would win four three. They’d come back and it was a very different mentality. In the end, they didn’t win anything. There was no trophy from that year. Um, we were a young club. We were only in second year of existence. So.
Jimmy Maas [00:37:31] Man, you thought it was just going to be very different. Yeah, exactly. You thought, oh, this is just, this thrill ride will never stop.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:37:38] And it’s amazing how when you’re winning and losing four, three, and you’re losing as much as you’re winning, you’re like, man, I just, I really wish we could just make it easy on ourselves and just win it one nil. And then you’re winning, you know, every other game one nill. And you’re like, where are all the goals, man? Like, come on, button things down.
Adrian Healey [00:37:52] But yeah, I, you know, very, very different mentality. It’s a glory game, isn’t it? It’s about trophies ultimately. And, um, you’d always, any coach would always take winning, winning ugly over losing pretty, you know, um in any sport, I think you can apply that to, but it’s, it’s particularly true in soccer. I think where, where there’s, where it’s as much of an art form as it is to, to, uh, X’s and O’s and science.
Jimmy Maas [00:38:25] Well, I personally am glad that, you know, dumb luck and decisions based on South by Southwest drunkenness got you to our doorstep, at least, um, your treat. You’re always fun to have around the office and, uh, always enjoy your calls on the weekends. When I, uh. When I find them on my.
Adrian Healey [00:38:45] Yeah. For us, Jimmy and Juan, it’s been, it’d been amazing to be able to come back to this city. And what has made it doubly amazing is be able to become even just a small part of this, this organization. Cause I think KUT and KUTX are very, very special places in this city is lucky to have them. And we may not realize that all the time, but we are very lucky to.
Jimmy Maas [00:39:07] And Austin FC too, that organization as well.
Adrian Healey [00:39:11] Yes.
Jimmy Maas [00:39:14] How important is this trophy?
Adrian Healey [00:39:15] It’s massive. It’s a massive. And for them to make the final and host it. I mean, what, what an event.
Jimmy Maas [00:39:22] Well, I’ve always had a dream that some team I followed would win a Lamar hunt trophy. No matter which Lamar hunts trophy. I’d really, the AFC championship, the Missouri, Kansas, uh, battle of the, whatever that is, or this one. I’ll take a Lamarr hunt trophy here. All right. Well, appreciate your time and thank you for coming.
Adrian Healey [00:39:42] Thank you guys. Real, real pleasure and appreciate all the stuff you do.
Jimmy Maas [00:39:47] We probably could have talked for, I don’t know, another half hour. But, uh, stick around. Juan went somewhere special. More on that coming up in a second.
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Jimmy Maas [00:40:40] Welcome back to Vmos Verde. I’m Jimmy Maas and I’m Juan Diego Garcia.
Jimmy Maas [00:40:43] And Juan, you, you’ve been at Q2 a lot this week.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:40:46] I have, yes. Tonight is my third night at Q2 stadium this week alone.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:40:51] Yes. And that’s not a normal activity for you, but, um, you did come here to, uh, witness the return of something important to soccer culture here in Austin.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:41:02] Right. We learned earlier this year in an earlier episode of vamos verde about the process to make TFOs. And we learned that they are not easy nor cheap and they take a lot of work to actually make happen. So they usually happen on big games and as Austin was working their way through the qualifying stages of the U S open cup, it started to feel like maybe. This team was going to go somewhere and there was going to be some important games being played at Q2 stadium in the near future. So ahead of the Minnesota United match in the semi-final, an illustrator named Octavio Sosa was hanging out with some friends, fellow Austin FC supporters, and they came up with an idea.
Rigo [00:41:47] We were brainstorming, uh, Rego came out. Uh, he really wanted to do a bucket hat and then we, uh skeleton. It’s usually one of our, uh it’s in a lot of designs of Austin FC.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:41:57] That’s Rigo Rodriguez, who you might recognize from episode two of this season, most of Austin FCs TFOs in the past have focused on advocacy or were used to highlight the supporter community. This time the design was made to send a message. Octavio pitched the design to the greater supporter community
Rigo [00:42:15] Their feedback said that they wanted to be a little bit more aggressive. They just wanted a little stronger than the first design.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:42:21] He sketched out a new design based on that feedback, but he felt there was something missing.
Rigo [00:42:26] I also thought about my kids. I thought about, my, my two kids, I have two boys and I thought about, I need, it needs something else. Like a friendly touch, like a, you know, cute touch. And the armadillo came up to my head and I was like, that’s perfect. That’s perfect, like the guy’s aggressive, but yet he has an armadillos. He has a friend and that’s what it’s all about, you know, making friends, the club. We’re all friends. We’re, we’re like a family.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:42:50] At this point, Austin still needed to get past Minnesota United to even begin to think about showing a TIFO in a cup final. Normally a Tifo would take around six weeks to make from design ideas to the finished product being shown on game day.
Rigo [00:43:04] I remember that I was watching the game and then I called Rigo and I said, Hey, what’s going to happen if, if we don’t win in Minnesota? And he said, if you don’t wind, we’re probably going to use the TIFO for a playoff or something like that. So we can rest. So I guess it was 96 minutes and Fowlder’s score. So I was like, yeah. But at the same time, I was, like, oh, I need to start really, we really need to push this. We really need make this happen.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:43:31] With half the time they usually have to make a TIFO, it took a huge collective effort from every corner of Austin FC supporter base to make it happen. The fabric was laying around, rejected from a past TIFo. The same goes for some of the paint they used, which had been laying around for a while. Christine Hanley was one of the Tifo leads on this project.
Christine [00:43:49] It’s the fastest one I’ve worked on materials and costs. I think we did this one on such a budget. It definitely helped that, you know, the costs were spread across, you know, all the groups, multiple donations. We just, you Know, penny pinched to where we could. And I feel like this one came in even under budget. And hopefully it’s a good starting point for TIFOs, you know, in the future.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:44:10] The Tifo could not have come to life in the time they had to make it, if not for a little help from the club, who allowed folks to paint at Q2 stadium.
Christine [00:44:18] It really helped having to be able to lay out the entire Tifo on the concourse. We had so many volunteers come out the first two painting days. The heat definitely helped, it was brutal outside, but it made the paint dry really quickly and we were able to get multiple coats on in one day.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:44:32] Everyone in the Austin FC supporter community pitched in with money and time folks from the Fighting Leslie’s, Pollo FC, Colectivo, La Murga, Austin Anthem and Los Verdes all supported the effort to get this Tifo ready for Wednesday night.
Rigo [00:44:47] A lot of people just came together and you can feel their love, you can feel the passion, they were excited, they’re like, we’re in the final, this is our first final ever.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:44:57] A big effort, a trophy worthy effort, if you will. Unfortunately, the team couldn’t make it happen this year, but like you said earlier, Jimmy, in order to lose a final, you have to play in a final and that’s a pretty big accomplishment for this franchise.
Jimmy Maas [00:45:11] And I think nobody really enjoys second place medallions when you receive them, but I think when you have time to look back upon a career or back upon moments, this could be a seminal one for the team going forward.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:45:24] Right, I don’t know if that second place medal might end up in a drawer somewhere, but they’ll probably still think about that Tifo that they saw ahead of the Open Cup final because it was quite the effort and given the circumstances of it all, it looked really good.
Jimmy Maas [00:45:40] And I mean, the run to get to tonight for the team, for the supporters, for everybody, and fans were in good form tonight, 20,700 people again here, I mean for real this time, hanging out and supporting the team. Healthy contingent from Nashville up in the corner. Soccer was pretty decent. All in all, pretty good night, just not the result that Austin was looking for.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:46:02] I don’t know what how the ref is going to take this, but from my place, just right along the the end line, that stadium was the loudest I’ve ever heard it in my life. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear ref you suck echoing in my head for the next month.
Jimmy Maas [00:46:17] On that note, Tori Penso, led the first all female referee team. All four referees tonight were women first time that has happened for us Open Cup Championship. So, you know, chance aside, congrats to them. Congrats to all of us for taking a few steps forward.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:46:40] You might feel a certain way about their performance, but history was made tonight. And I think that’s pretty cool.
Jimmy Maas [00:46:45] We’re gonna rush this because I literally see the lights being turned off around us. So big thanks to everybody who helped put this together. Adrian Healy for basically coming in because I told him to because I’m his boss now, as we discussed. But no, he did come in and give us a kindly give us an hour of his time. And big thanks to everyone else who helped with the Tivo project.
Jimmy Maas [00:47:10] Octavio Sosa, the illustrator, as well as Christine Hanley, the Tivo lead that I talked to, as well as everybody in the supporter groups for welcoming me back in to stick my microphone in their face and talk to them about Tifos.
Jimmy Maas [00:47:23] Thanks to Elizabeth McQueen and Tanu Thomas on the KET KETX Studio team. Big thanks to Austin FC’s Cameron Kubek, Ryan Madden, Gwen Hernandez. They’re AV guys who are we’re not doing anything for us this week, but we’ll still throw a shout out to them because we’re in the
Juan Diego Garcia [00:47:40] habit of doing it. Special shout out to Alex Daley Hill and Ainsley Beers who I ran into on the sideline and they were as usual.
Jimmy Maas [00:47:48] And well, I do stand corrected. They did improve your mood. So that is a contribution to the podcast. Absolutely. Also, thanks to Geron Marshall for this music. And thank you to you for joining us on another journey. Only a few more episodes left this season. Only a few more games left this lot to play for still for Austin FC.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:48:08] Even when it’s almost over, it’s never really over.
Jimmy Maas [00:48:14] Is it over now? Let’s just listen to the stadium for a little bit.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:48:18] Magical
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This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
