Auburn soccer season preview: Breaking down the preseason outlook for the Tigers, position by position
Position battles for starting goalkeeper and at forward have the eyes of Auburn's coaches in preseason practices. Here's a full breakdown of each position group ahead of the 2026 season.
The story of this year’s Auburn soccer season is already on its first page — with preseason practices under way and the first preseason game closing in on Aug. 5 — but that first page is mostly blank.
Going into his second season as Auburn soccer head coach, James Armstrong is seeking answers for three of the most obvious questions for a soccer team:
Who’s going to score the goals?
Who’s going to stop the other team from scoring goals?
What formation are they going to run?
Yes, Auburn has position battles ongoing at both the ever-important goalkeeper position and at the ever-important center-forward position — position battles that Armstrong and the coaches have had a close eye on since the team’s preseason acclimation period opened July 15.
But there are options for Auburn at each of those positions, and that’s what makes that mostly blank first page less of a bad thing and more of a fresh slate, more of an open canvas on which to paint.
The same goes with the three formations the coaches are open to as options, depending on how player evaluation goes in practice and how certain players come back from injury. They know what they can do, and they’ve got three formations they’re mulling over, and it’s just a matter of how they think they can put the team in the best position possible — and get the squad’s most talented players on the field.
Here’s a look at that crop of talent — starting with the position group which Armstrong feels most confident in, and on which he plans to build out from: