Owen Wolff forges own path to stardom with Austin FC | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

Whether a born-and-raised native or a transplant embracing the club that invested faith and resources in them, most homegrown players across MLS are products of their local environment who wear their club’s crest with a special sense of pride.

It’s been a bit different for Owen Wolff and his older brother Tyler, thanks to the playing and coaching careers of their father Josh. A standout striker with the US men’s national team and Chicago, Kansas City, 1860 Munich and D.C. United, the elder Wolff then worked on the technical staffs of D.C., Columbus and the USMNT before becoming Austin FC’s first-ever head coach.

Though quite young for much of dad’s soccer journey, Owen remembers vivid little snapshots along the way. Ventures into the bouncing stands and roaring chants of the D.C. supporters’ section at old RFK Stadium. Navigating life as an expatriate in distant Germany. Hanging around the Crew’s training facility as Josh ran first-team sessions with head coach Gregg Berhalter.

You might say MLS as a whole shaped the Wolff brothers as much as any one locale.

“We've always been around soccer,” Owen told MLSsoccer.com in a one-on-one conversation this week as he and his Austin teammates prepare to host San Diego FC at Q2 Stadium for Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire (4 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).

“Growing up, I watched my dad a lot, that played a big role into wanting to be a soccer player, as well as with my older brother, just watching him and being around him, and seeing how competitive we are when we're doing things together.”

Soccer scion

That environment helped nurture two professionals to follow in dad’s footsteps – and maybe more, considering their younger siblings Gavin and Ella are also in the mix – but it also exposed Owen to an all-too-familiar trope in children’s sports. It’s a persistent stereotype that often boils down to just two words, a phrase often tossed about in the increasingly cutthroat world of competitive youth soccer.

Coach’s son.

No matter how talented or dedicated a player may be, skeptics can swiftly cast shade over their qualifications simply by uttering that phrase – even though it’s well-established that elite professionals tend to arise from industrious, soccer-obsessed environments like the ones coaches create. The examples are many: Bob and Michael Bradley, Harry and Jamie Redknapp, Cesare and Paolo Maldini, Zinedine and Luca Zidane, to name a few.

Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that Owen would become a target among a small but outspoken slice of Austin’s devoted fanbase as popular sentiment turned against his father Josh in the final stages of his tenure as the Verde & Black’s head coach, which ended in October after the central Texans were eliminated from Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs contention.

Owen is the first homegrown player in ATX history, and made his first-team debut at the tender age of 16 in 2021. He’s been a standout performer in most of his appearances since then, maturing into a well-rounded central midfielder with technique and intelligence as well as the necessary physical tools. He represented the US prominently at the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup, contributing a goal and two assists as Mikey Varas’ side reached the quarterfinals.

The genuine article

“Owen's always been like, a quietly confident dude. I've been perusing his numbers since he was here – obviously there's criticism because of the family ties in recent years,” said teammate Jon Gallagher. “But I think if you look at his actual play, he's been sensational. You look at his age, too, it's quite remarkable. I don't know what I was doing at 16 – he's making his debut and then he's starting almost every game for us at the ages of 18, 19, 20, and playing a major impact in this league, which isn't easy.”

If there was any lingering suspicion of nepotism around Q2 Stadium, the match-winning performances by ‘Teen Wolff’ in the first four weeks of the 2025 campaign under new coach Nico Estévez have surely vanquished it once and for all.

“I mean, I tried to trade for him a lot of times when I wasn't here,” the former FC Dallas head coach said of Wolff on Thursday. “Everyone in the league that knows a little bit about the game knows that he is one of the better young prospect players that we have in this country. We just have to keep helping him to do his thing, just be confident, be relaxed, enjoy the game.

“He’s young, he has a lot of things to keep growing and learning and help him to make his dreams, as we want to help any player here. But the only thing I can say, I always loved the way that he plays.”

Estévez, in fact, has known Owen since he was about 10 years old. The Spaniard initially worked as the Crew academy’s director of methodology before joining Berhalter’s first-team staff, and saw the building blocks already falling into place for his colleague’s precocious kid. Now things have come full circle as he works to provide the player with the finishing touches to soar into the next phase of his career.

“He was doing his first steps in the Columbus academy when I was the director there. You already could see that he was different, that he had something special,” recalled Estévez.

“Now it's about how we can help him to mature his game. And it's about playing, it's about gaining that confidence. It is not like we coaches give confidence,” he added. “It’s players giving confidence to the staff to select you. And I think one of the things that he's been very consistent this year is giving confidence every single day that he shows up to training, he shows up to the game, that he can be an important player for the team.”

Midfield engine

Austin (6 points, 2W-2L-0D) are off to a reasonably solid start under Estévez, and can step into a wider spotlight this weekend with steadily growing confidence, thanks to contributions great and small from Wolff.

Both of the Verde & Black's wins were 1-0 results, and both of those goals came from corner kicks, both delivered by Wolff, crucial breakthroughs which allowed ATX to reap the maximum points return from dogged defensive performances like the one that powered their 1-0 upset of LAFC in Los Angeles last Saturday.

It’s a high compliment to Wolff’s abilities that on a roster with an average age of 27.3, on which all eight international roster slots and a full allotment of three Designated Players are being utilized, for a club that spent upwards of $25 million over the winter and have broken their own transfer-fee record three times in the past year, it’s a 20-year-old homegrown who has been entrusted with those key set-piece duties.

Estévez even goes so far as to compare Owen’s cultivation of those deliveries to Christian Pulisic, relating the consistency he watched the USMNT star painstakingly develop on the training ground during his tenure with the national team staff. Wolff has provided plenty of hard graft on both sides of the ball as a box-to-box central midfielder, too; he’s ATX’s early co-leader in key passes, for example, and has clocked some of their highest ground coverage data.

In sum, it’s a profile very comparable to some of the biggest outbound transfers among MLS homegrowns, and Owen does indeed aspire to test himself in one of Europe’s top leagues someday soon. That ambition adds further weight to his 2025 outlook.

“Also his contribution on the side that is not that pretty, that is working for the team, winning balls – he is a player that recovers a lot of balls, covers a lot of ground,” noted Estévez. “The other day he was able to do almost 13 kilometers in that game. That means he's a player that physically has the attributes to be a player that can help the team, make the difference for Austin FC.

“I think this is a good season for him, because of the profile of player that he is and the profile of players that we don't have. He's bringing to the table a player that has a really good understanding of playing in between the lines, that has really good acceleration and dribbling forward, and also has a really good pass in behind the back line.”

Lone Wolff

Owen couldn’t help but take some notice of the negative feedback about his father in some quarters of the Verde faithful as the team struggled in the wake of their excellent 2022 season. Yet he credits the support he gained in ATX’s locker room for helping him on an even keel, having already won the respect of his elder teammates.

“I didn't really pay attention to it too much, and I feel like it's a good thing, because it helped me just stay in my own mental space that I really didn't get affected by it,” he said. “I had guys around me that also gave me that confidence that, like, you don't have to worry about any of the outside stuff or what other people believe. We have you here and we have your back. So it was nice to have that.”

Even at age 20, he’s internalized the concept that all of this just comes with the territory.

“It's going to come with what we do. It doesn't matter if I'm playing under my dad or not,” he said. “I feel like any player is going to get that criticism no matter where they are.

“I'm able to have my own impact on the Austin organization, and my career is totally separate from who my father was. So I feel like I always had that opportunity to help build that career.”

It is nonetheless worth noting that he’s now ATX’s lone Wolff. Josh recently joined Ben Olsen’s coaching staff at Houston Dynamo FC, so he, his wife Angela and their younger children are in the process of relocating to the Bayou City, while Tyler, 22, moved from Atlanta United to Real Salt Lake over the winter. That means Owen will need to strike out on his own at some point this year.

On that subject, he finally begins to sound less like a seasoned veteran and more like someone just beginning his life as an adult. And Texas’ capital city is a great spot for that, even if he’s already leery of a rising cost of living in his near future.

“I'm excited. But also, like, I don't know – I have to be spending money on my own place now,” he said with a grin. “I'm thinking about moving downtown, so I’ll definitely be able to experience [Austin life] a little more. But yeah, it's definitely felt like home, being able to be here for the last four years, five years. It's a place that I feel comfortable at and I'm excited to start living on my own. If I'm moving downtown, that'd be amazing, but still trying to figure that out.”

Those who've watched him come of age over the past few years will be there to lend a guiding hand as needed.

“I'm a big fan of his, truly, and I'm not just saying that as a teammate,” said Gallagher. “I really do believe that this kid is pretty special, and he's got a lot of tools that a lot of us wish we had at that age. He's got a level head, comes from a good family, a soccer family, his soccer IQ is really high. I think if you look physically too, he's a beast, a specimen, honestly – so strong you forget his age half the time, you’ve got remind yourself sometimes.

“He's been pretty impressive for us this season, and he's shown his levels.”