RootsBlog

Soul fans! Your Oakland Soul host Pleasanton RAGE at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time at Merritt College for Pride Day. The team will stream the match here. The match is sold out, so if you don’t already have tickets, enjoy the stream. Hopefully the camera angle has improved.

Pleasanton RAGE

“Pleasanton RAGE strives to provide the most exceptional all girls soccer experience in the country. RAGE is committed to whole player development…” I cannot get over the incongruity of a kids development academy starting at age 4 and the name “RAGE.” It turns out that “RAGE” is an acronym:

I am a big fan of the questionable uses of em-dashes and ellipses throughout, and the use of “player” in “allowing player to reach full potential.” I have a couple suggested changes:

The website also includes a paragraph called “RAGE Vision.”

To be honest, this section of my preview posts is usually reserved for roasting the used car salesmen who own the Roots’ USL Championship rivals, and most of the teams in the USL W League are community player-development academies. A real buzzkill.

RAGE’s Form

Pleasanton have five points on one win and two draws (in theory you could have five draws, but those are the only available combination of results for five points). Their win was a 3-0 win over Academica in Turlock. (Every time I think about “Turlock” I think of Scruffy the Janitor from Futurama saying pronouncing “toilets” and “terlets“, although I also now see he doesn’t pronounce it “terlets.” I have Mandela-effected my own cartoon recall.) Other than that game, Pleasanton have only scored a single goal, which is extremely grim. So that is to say, their list of top scorers on the season is Kennedy Mayo (2), Marivic Lek-Miro, and Emily Fitzgerald. In their last three games they have lost to SF Glens 0-2 (pretty respectable tbh), lost 0-2 to Stockton Cargo (less respectable), and drawn Marin Sirens 0-0 (a defense even worse than Pleasanton’s).

Five points has Pleasanton tied with Marin FC for 6th in the table. They will not be making the playoffs.

Soul’s Form

Back on track!

Date	Opponent	Result	GF	GA
5/6	at Stockton	W	3	2
5/13	vs. Olympic Club	W	1	0
5/28	vs. Academica	W	4	0
6/1	vs. Stockton Cargo	W	5	2
6/4	vs. California Storm	W	3	2
6/8	at California Storm	L	0	1
6/11	at SF Glens	L	0	3
6/14	at Academica	W	5	0
6/18	vs. Pleasanton RAGE			
6/21	at Olympic Club			
6/25	at Marin FC Sirens			
7/2	vs. SF Glens		

Soul got an absolutely enormous win over Cal Storm on June 4, but followed it up with disappointing losses to Cal Storm and SF Glens. Last week Soul got back on track with a 5-0 hammering of Academica, who are really dreadful, somehow accumulating a -30 goal differential in only nine games.

Here are the Soul’s goal scorers through their first eight matches:

Name	Goals
Nayeli Diaz	4
Kaytlin Brinkman	4
Jordan Geis	3*
Ceci Gee	2
Jaida Nyby	2
Miranda Nild	2
T Noyola	1
Sam Tran	1
Isabella Flocchini	1
Eden Olson

Community Score Predictions

Jon

Put me down for 11-0

Jorge Leon

8-0 because the Sol is shining

Jesse Barush

7-0 Soul, Brinkman with the hat trick.

Jennifer Tru

4-0 soul. After two recent losses they are ready to reestablish dominance in division!

Cassandra

I’m going 5-0

Dr. Cole-Bloom

4-0 Soul, Happy Father’s Day!