Doing the Double: How Often Does Your Favorite European Team Win (or Lose) On the Same Day as Austin FC?

After Austin’s last home match against San Jose, I ran into an acquaintance of mine whom I knew to be a Manchester City fan. 

“You must be having a pretty good Saturday,” I said to him.

You see, earlier that day, Man City defeated Crystal Palace. This means that my buddy had a day that was bookended by victories by his favorite teams. As my preferred European squad is considerably less talented or successful than Man City, I could only sit and wonder what it must feel like to be awash in so many triumphs. Did my friend ever get used to the feeling of watching his teams win on the same day? And for that matter, exactly how many times had he gotten to experience such joy?

The answer was: quite a few, as it turns out. Since the start of the 2021 MLS season, Austin and Man City have both won competitive matches on the same day 16 different times. This makes a fair bit of sense: Man City is a very good team, and (with their deep domestic cup runs and Champions League success) they play a lot of matches every season, which means that the opportunities for them to “do the double” with Austin are plentiful.

But then this made me curious as to how this compares to other teams in Europe, and that led me down the kind of thoroughly-unnecessary-yet-mildy-interesting research rabbit hole that you’ve come to expect from us here at TF9. So let’s take a look at how squads from the top five leagues in Europe fare when they play on the same day as Austin FC. If you’re a fan of one of these teams, are your weekends usually full of your favorite squads both winning? Or is soccer to you a never ending parade of Sisyphean frustration and pain (*cough Tottenham cough*)? Let’s get to the numbers!

The Methodology

Since Austin FC began play in April 2021, 127 teams have spent at least one season in any of the top five European leagues. For today’s purposes, I will only consider competitive matches when a team is playing in a top flight league, but I will consider all of those matches played in that season (including European and domestic cup competitions). So for instance, I didn’t count any of Luton Town’s matches prior to their promotion to the Premier League in 2023, but after being promoted I counted their FA Cup and EFL Cup matches in their totals.

From Austin’s perspective, I’m considering every MLS regular season, MLS playoff, Leagues Cup, CONCACAF Champions League, and 2022-2023 US Open Cup match. I’m not including the 2024 US Open Cup because Don Garber hates anything that he can’t monetarily exploit, and I’m not including any friendlies because that would be sicko behavior too extreme even for me.

Also, when matches in knockout tournaments go to penalty kicks, most leagues officially consider these to be draws. I think that this is both dishonest and cowardly – in my tabulation, the winner of PKs gets a win and the loser gets a loss. Similarly, if a two-legged tie is determined by goal differential or some other non-penalty tiebreaker, then the advancing team is credited with a win in the second leg.

Finally, I’m not giving any bonus points for important or emotionally-resonant results. Sure, you may think that Liverpool’s third round defeat of Bumblefuck United in the 2021 FA Cup was the pinnacle of mortal happiness and that no day could ever match its beauty and it will serve as an eternal reminder that you’ll never walk alone, but I don’t care. To me, it’s on equal footing with Austin’s victory over FC Dallas in the playoffs and Villareal’s win over Almeria in Week 11 of the 2022 La Liga season – they’re all just check marks in the plus column.

The Results

With those formalities out of the way, let’s start by taking a look at the teams who have had the most victories on days when Austin also won:

Unsurprisingly, Manchester City has the most paired win days with Austin. Joining them in the top 10 are several of the other European powerhouses like PSG, AC Milan, Inter, and Real Madrid. But check out Freiburg! Despite finishing no higher than fifth in the Bundesliga since 2021, they have a real knack for winning on the same day as Austin.

But all of these teams have the advantage of never being at risk of relegation, so they have plenty of opportunities to play on the same day as Austin. Indeed, these ten teams have combined for 375 common matchdays with Austin. So what if we look at teams whose match days most likely result in a win for both squads, regardless of how many common matchdays have occurred?

On May 1, 2021, Austin FC defeated Minnesota United and, over in Spain, SD Huesca beat Real Sociedad. Three weeks later, Huesca was relegated and they haven’t yet climbed back up into La Liga. One and done, baby!

And what about the flip side of that coin? Which fan bases have seen both of their teams lose on the same day the most?

It’s mostly a bunch of European flotsam – mid- to lower-table teams who don’t win very often but usually aren’t bad enough to get relegated (looking at you, Everton). But it should be noted that Lille, Atalanta, and Lazio are fighting for places in the Champions League most seasons, so they aren’t all lousy.

Also, let’s give a special mention to Angers in Ligue 1, which tops the table in double losses while also never winning a match on the same day that Austin also won (out of 22 common matchdays). That’s an awful lot of disappointment for the dual Angers-Austin fan (of which there are thousands, I am sure).

And while we’re on the subject, what about those other fans who have never known what it’s like to see their favorite European club win on the same day as Austin? Well, there’s a lot more of them than we’d like to see. Of the 127 teams who have been in a Big 5 league since 2021, 26 of them have never started a matchday with a victory and then had Austin return the favor. Here are those teams in alphabetical order:

Even a cursory glance tells you that most of these clubs are quite bad. Indeed, of the 26 teams who have never tasted top-flight victory on the same day as Austin, 25 of them have been relegated at least once. The 26th team is Strasbourg in France. Strasbourg have been in Ligue 1 since 2017. They’ve played on the same day as Austin 28 different times. And these two teams have never won on the same day. That’s wild. Here are the teams with no double wins in order of common matchdays:

And what if we take a look at the European teams who serve as the greatest predictor of Austin results? In other words, which teams have the greatest percentage of their common matchdays that result in double wins, double losses, or double draws with Austin FC? Here is every team whose same-day results match with Austin at least 50 percent of the time:

Well waddaya know, it’s another list of bad European teams! Here we’ve got seventeen squads, and 16 of them have been relegated at least once. And this stands to reason – if Austin FC was in Europe and had the same results for the past three-plus seasons, they would almost certainly have been relegated as well. The one bizarre outlier on the list is Lazio in Serie A, who have never been particularly bad. Indeed, Lazio’s win percentage since the start of the 2020-21 Serie A season (49.2%) and points per match (1.67) are both much higher than Austin’s (33.9% and 1.22 respectively). But whenever Lazio plays on the same day as Austin, it’s a coin flip as to whether the results will match or not.

And finally, what about those dual fans who never have to experience the sting of watching both of their favorite teams lose on the same day? It’s a far smaller list than that of the teams who have never achieved joint victory:

Most of these clubs are yo-yo teams with small sample sizes, but the two at the top are definitely soccer aristocracy. Both Atletico Madrid and Napoli both have 29 common matchdays with Austin FC (though not the same common matchdays), and neither team has ever lost on the same day as Austin. How soothing must it be to know that, no matter what else happens,  your day will not contain a double shot of sports disappointment? If you’re a fan of Los Colchoneros or Gli Azzurri, please brag about it let me know in the comments.

So what can we make of all this? Well, nothing, really. Or at least nothing that we couldn’t already guess (holy shit Austin often wins on the same day as really good European teams, fetch me my fainting couch). I suppose if there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this, it’s that we should be wary of any day when Strasbourg or Angers wins, as an Austin loss often follows these results. Similarly, we can get excited on any day that Atletico Madrid or Napoli lose, as these results usually portend a non-loss for Austin FC. And if I can figure out how to do it in WordPress, I’ll add an interactive table to this post so you can look up how your own favorite team does on common Austin matchdays. But until that happens, I’d like to leave you with this: my friend the Man City fan who started me on this journey is a front-running putz who should be taught a lesson in suffering like the rest of us.