‘You saw what we’re about:’ Charlotte FC rolls to a big home win in bizarre match
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Charlotte FC whipped Austin FC, 3-1, behind Pep Biel’s two late goals Saturday night.
- Austin played 65 minutes with 10 men after Guilherme Biro’s 25th-minute red card.
- Disallowed VAR goal and the early red card provided a couple of controversies.
Charlotte FC rewarded the fans at its 2026 home opener Saturday night, rolling past Austin FC 3-1 and looking very much like the team it’s supposed to be.
“The first two games were not good enough,” Charlotte FC captain Ashley Westwood said. “But tonight you saw what we’re about.”
Charlotte FC had tied its first game and lost its second, both on the road. They were disappointing results, and coach Dean Smith had questioned some players’ individual performances in the first two games and made some lineup changes.
But the home pitch was far more friendly, as Charlotte star Pep Biel headlined the effort with two goals. He nearly had a third goal twice — once on a controversial disallowed goal, and once when he hit the crossbar while attempting a hat trick in the final minutes.
Before a raucous sellout home crowd of 35,611 at Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte FC blistered Austin with a barrage of shots (25 of them, compared to Austin’s five). Most of them came after Austin defender Guilherme Biro drew an early red card in the 25th minute for stepping on the back of the leg of Charlotte’s Idan Toklomati, which meant Biro was ejected from the game and that Austin would only field 10 men the rest of the way.
After that, with a man advantage for the game’s final 65 minutes, Charlotte dominated in every statistic. But it was still only 1-1 in the 68th minute because, almost immediately after Charlotte broke the ice with a goal from Toklomati, Charlotte’s Morrison Agyemang accidentally countered with an own goal. Agyemang headed the ball into the bottom right corner of his own goal while trying to keep it away from an Austin FC attacker, much to goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina’s chagrin.
Yes, Charlotte scored every goal in this game — three for itself, and one for Austin.
Biel put an end to the suspense, though, with two goals in the match’s final 30 minutes. His fleet, flashy presence was a reminder of what Charlotte was missing in its playoff series in 2025 — the inability to score goals. Biel has the knack, which is why he is one of Charlotte FC’s designated players and why Biel missing 13 games (including the playoffs) in 2025 due to injury was a difficult blow.
Now Biel is back, though, and rolling.
“Pep was excellent tonight,” said Smith, whose team is now 1-1-1 on the season with four more home games in a row coming up. “He’s energetic. He’s one who’s got high, high ceiling technical skills, and you saw that all today. When he’s on it, he’s very difficult to play against. And tonight, he was on it.”
Always entertaining in postgame press conferences, Smith also had an opinion about Biel’s disallowed goal. It went in, and was called a goal originally. But the call was overturned on replay because officials decided that the ball had grazed the hand of Charlotte’s Brandt Bronico, although that was very difficult to see even in slow motion.
“If we’re disallowing goals for that, the game’s gone,” Smith said. “I mean, the VAR guy (video assistant referee) must have a major in physics, because I haven’t seen any deviation (in the ball’s flight). ... If you’re ruling goals out for that, then we should get rid of VAR, because nobody wants to see that disallowed.”
The game was classified a sellout, incidentally, because this year Charlotte FC is selling only the lower bowl for soccer. There will be no upper-bowl seating in 73,000-seat Bank of America Stadium. It makes for a better atmosphere to have the fans crowded together and closer, the team believes.
On Saturday, it sure looked that way.
