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Yes, against our better judgment, we've made an Anchorman reference. The three-day turnaround from Roots’ weekend “home” fixture against Austin Bold meant the starting lineup saw a bit of rotation. Kai Greene and Saalih Muhammad got their first starts of the year, featuring on either side of Tarek Morad in what played as a back 3. Akeem Ward and Memo Diaz appeared to slot in as wingbacks, with Fissore and Mbumba through the middle. Jeremy Bokila again got the start up front, often joined up top by Chuy Enriquez, with Danny Flores providing the ostensible link to the midfield. The game played out…a lot like Saturday’s. Loyal dominated possession for the first 15 minutes or so, but couldn’t put the ball on net. Zeus made a snazzy looking save in the 11th minute, but on replay it seemed like the ball was headed wide. In the 13th minute, Loyal winger Moshobane tuned Kai and fizzed a dangerous looking cross into the box, but the resulting Loyal shot went wide. Roots started to get a foo

Roots will play away to San Diego Loyal on June 29, 2021 at 7:30 p.m.  Game will be broadcast, as usual, on KOFY TV and ESPN+.  The Loyal play at Torero Park , an absolute dump. Pathetic. The Club San Diego Loyal SC is a brand new soccer team, completely lacking in history.  The Loyal have been around half as long as the Roots--mere children.  It’s a farce that they started right in USL without having to fight their way up the ranks.  This league’s standards have gone completely to shit. Per Wikipedia, the club has four owners.  The first, the club chairman, is Andrew Vassiliadis, described by the San Diego Union Tribune as “the son of a Greek soccer player and a real-estate mogul.”   He is joined by President & CEO Warren Smith, described by his twitter profile as a “life enthusiast” (someone didn’t go to law school).  Smith apparently co-founded the Sacramento River Cats (AAA affiliate of the SF Giants, although not at the time) and later founded the Sacramento Republic (miserab

Fresh off a second straight zero-goal performance, this time featuring a grand total of 3 shots, Roots have signed striker Brandon Allen , most recently of Memphis 901 FC, but with experience at NYRB II and the pre-MLS iteration of Nashville SC, among several other pit stops. This is Brandon’s 5th pro season, after he played collegiately for Georgetown. The Hoya team his senior year featured several players that will be familiar to American footy fanatics, including JT Marcinkowski (now with San Jose), Keegan Rosenberry (a right back with Colorado Rapids), and Josh Yaro, who now plays for tomorrow’s opponent San Diego Loyal. (I am compelled to mention that despite this talent, Georgetown’s regional in the NCAA soccer tournament was won by Syracuse.) In his professional career, Brandon has racked up 113 appearances in the USL Championship (or thereabouts--Transfermarkt and Wikipedia have different numbers), and scored 43 goals. We’ve checked out some of his highlights, and we like what

So, off the top, we have to give a big shout-out to Roots leadership for the watch party they put on. They definitely made the best of a bad situation. On to the recap. I have to warn you, it was not the most exciting game. Roots set up in a 4-4-2 with a midfield diamond. The narrow midfield was likely due to the narrow pitch at Las Positas College, our venue for the match. I believe the center backs were Klimenta and Morad, with Ornstil occupying the #6 role at the base of the diamond, but on TV the numbers on Oakland’s silver kits are unreadable, and from a distance all three look the same. A humble request to these three from the Blog: Please dye your hair different colors so we can tell you apart. Anyway, Akeem Ward played right back, with Soya Takahashi on the left. Chuy Enriquez and Danny Flores played up front (Tyler Blackwood was injured and not in the match day squad), and the other three in midfield were Fissore, Mbumba, and Mfeka. Austin Bold were very comfortable sending b

The Roots will attempt to host their sorta-home opener against Austin Bold, F.C. on June 26, 2021 at 7:30 p.m. (NOTE SCHEDULE CHANGE) at Las Positas College.  You are unlikely to be there, however, as it is closed to the public.  You may, however, be at a bar, or at the Roots’ sponsored Watch Party.  The Blog will be at the Roots’ sponsored Watch Party. You can catch the game on ESPN+ or on KOFY TV.   The Club History and Background Austin Bold are a new team, founded in 2017, and having competed in only two competitions, the 2019 and 2020 USL seasons.   Austin Bold play in Bold Stadium, a soccer-specific stadium ( luxury ) located within the Circuit of the Americas, a motor racing track within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Austin, Texas.  If it makes you feel better about the soccer-specific stadium, this is about the same distance from downtown Austin as Walnut Creek is from downtown Oakland.  It’s also inside a damn race track.  Austin Bold’s Logo ( https://www.austinboldfc.c

Roots announced on Tuesday evening that their first home game of the season will be rescheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and will be played behind closed doors at Las Positas College in Livermore. The official position of the Blog on this update is: “significantly better than nothing.” Roots fans who follow other leagues will have plenty of experience watching soccer with no fans--an experience that none of us have missed.   The game will be streamed on ESPN+ and broadcast on KOFY. No word on whether fake crowd noise will be added to the broadcast stream. There are rumors circulating on Twitter that La Brigada will find a nearby hill from which to make their support of the Roots known.  The Blog will be trying to find a bar that will broadcast the game.  If you know of any venues that are planning to broadcast, drop them in the comments and we will update this story. Game preview will come on Thursday or Friday, when the preview-writing half of the blog gets tired of working for the week

Artist rendering: Oakland Roots' home pitch Around 24 hours after Roots’ home opener against Sacramento was called off due to an “unplayable” field, club management announced that a “new, state of the art playing surface” had been ordered long ago but due to Covid- and weather-related delays won’t be ready until the team’s July 10 match with Las Vegas. (We’ll leave it to you to evaluate the statement’s credibility.) So Roots are scrambling to “find solutions” for next weekend’s now-home opener against Austin Bold. Neither Roots nor USL, to our knowledge, has disclosed precisely what about the pitch rendered it unplayable Saturday, information we’d need in order to know what kind of solutions Roots are looking for here. Yet in true Oakland spirit, one local, and very successful, coach has begun to take action:   I'm always building...always working because that's the Laney way. No task is too small or too big to get done. Steamroll any adversity that comes your way. #LaneyB

  We here at the Blog have always thought the Roots should have modest objectives for this, their inaugural season in the USL: Put a competitive team on the field, Drain the world’s oceans so we can find and kill god. In fairness, we recognized that #2 might be a little ambitious. Maybe make the playoffs before pursuing the Almighty, you know? We did not imagine Oakland would get tripped up on objective #1. Yet here we are, 4 games into the season, and Oakland have put together a competitive team, but have no field to play on. In one of the more surreal scenes I have ever witnessed, Roots announced 25 minutes before kickoff was scheduled to occur that the match with Sacramento Republic would not be played due to field conditions. This is certainly one way to keep the opponent off the scoreboard, but it is not, if we are being totally honest, the Blog’s preferred method. The pitch for Roots games at Laney College appears to simply be draped over the existing football field. A soccer pit

The Roots host their first home game of the season, and as a USL club, against new rival Sacramento Republic at 5:10 at Laney College on June 19th (and in celebration of new federal holiday Juneteenth). Tickets are sold out, and there are none available on Stubhub at the time of posting. The Blog hopes that anyone reading this has already purchased tickets. Details of the Juneteenth celebration can be found here: https://www.oaklandrootssc.com/news_article/show/1169941 Here are some things you should know about Sacramento Republic: The Club To get this out of the way, just rip the band-aid right off, we don’t want to say “failed MLS expansion team.” Owned by Sac Soccer Entertainment & Holding, or as it’s better known, Sac Holding.  I have been told that this joke is “low-hanging fruit”, but that actually seems like another cheap shot.  Currently Sacramento Republic plays home games at Heart Health Park - typically that’s a different part of the physical. Republic’s first ever gam