Roots family it is game day! The Roots travel to a parking lot in the vicinity of Phoenix Skyharbor Airport to take on reigning USL Champions, the 0-0-2 Phoenix Rising. The match kicks off at 7:00 p.m. and will be available on KTVU Plus and ESPN+. The official watch party is at Line51, but you should also be able to catch it at Almanac, the Athletic Club, and several other bars that we’ve all heard of because we’re well-respected men- and women-about-town.
Phoenix Rising
Phoenix Rising are in their TENTH year of operation, nearly as long as Arizona has been a state. By USL standards, that’s so much history. I will largely ignore that, and tell you that Phoenix is most famous as a place that Didier Drogba played.
My photoshop skills are dramatically improving.
Relatedly, I will assert that Phoenix Rising are the Chelsea of USL. I will not be taking any questions at this time.
In 2022, Phoenix poached Oakland’s head coach mid-season only to go 4-1-5 and miss the playoffs. In 2023, with a full offseason to sign Roots players, Guerra led Phoenix to a 12-10-12 record (nobody draws like Guerra), good enough for sixth place. Phoenix put it together on the road in the postseason though, led in large part by midseason transfer Dariusz Formella. Three of four playoff games needed extra time, and one needed penalties after extra time, because again, nobody draws like Guerra. Phoenix won it all on penalties in Charleston, a fact I got wrong in last week’s preview (because FBRef perplexingly listed the result with the winner first, instead of the home team first like, y’know, everyone else in the world presenting soccer results). That was just one of the many things I said about Charleston in my post last week that made Battery fans extremely angry at me.1
Anyway, good for Formella, Jose Hernandez, and Alejandro Fuenmayor. They played hard for the Roots and deserve their flowers for winning with Phoenix.
In the offseason, Juan Guerra abandoned Phoenix to go be an assistant coach in Houston, because the man can’t help but see a worse city and immediately leave for it.
Phoenix let Carlos Harvey, Manuel Arteaga, Darnell King, and Danny Trejo walk, which is quite a list of outgoings. Because obviously Guerra made sure to reshape the entire team in his image before abandoning it, they brought in Edgardo Rito and Juan Carlos Azocar (defensible signings, at least) as well as Remi Cabral and Laurence Wyke.
So far this season, Phoenix have a 0-1 loss to Birmingham Legion at home and 0-1 loss to Monterey Bay in Seaside. Hard to imagine any of you are going to click on highlights of those games, so I’m not going to link them.
Roots’ Form
Pretty good, considering. There is no way you have to sit four of your intended starting eleven and expect to get a result. Even at home, even against a team that has flown across country. It’s just too many changes. So I think you have to look at that performance and be very happy with one point.
I checked in with some folks at half time, as I was not able to get the game on until the 75th minute2, and the Roots’ performance through 45 was described to me as “feeble.” I think that’s certainly true through 35, but I thought the Roots started to put it together a little bit after conceding. I think to an extent Charleston sat back and defended, and to an extent the Roots players accepted that the bad thing had happened and they could settle in and play their game.
Things certainly improved at halftime. The Alekseev goal in the second half was thing of beauty–Chery beautifully disguised his pullback to Memo, and Alekseev had been doing his homework and knew exactly where Memo was going to put that cross.
I thought Hackshaw looked a lot more comfortable in this game than in the first game. Logue showed his leadership, anchoring a make-shift back five. Paul had his usual heroics. Johnny struggled to get involved in the game, and Chery did as well to a lesser extent. Justin Rasmussen looked like he has the stuff to really contribute this season, and that’s lucky because Hackshaw is going to be out for international duty this coming weekend and at other times this season.
Players to Watch
Our readers know what to expect from Azocar, Fuenmayor, Rito, Formella, and Hernandez. So else is there?
Remi Cabral #91 – Number 91 is atrocious for a professional soccer player. Cabral is from Paris and came up through the PSG youth system, but never really made the jump to the senior level in France. He played 56 times for Galaxy II in the 2021-22 seasons, four times against the Roots including scoring one in Los Dos’s infuriating 3-1 win over Roots on July 1, 2022 when the first half was marked by a 35th minute substitution Chuy for Draco Malfoy, and Charlie Dennis getting yellow cards in the 40th and 45th+5.3
Pape Boye #4 – Boye is a really interesting story. He was the anchor of a Clemson side that won the the National Championship in 2023 and was in line to be drafted in the first round of the MLS Super Draft but opted instead to go to USL where he wouldn’t languish in a Next Pro program. Boye is from Dakar, Senegal, and is listed at 6’4.5″ on Wikipedia.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Bloom
I am going to assume folks are back from illness, but unfortunately international duty will prevent Delgado from running out his first choice 11. Luckily, I don’t think this is a big step down anywhere, although you miss having Tamacas in the lineup.
Phoenix are off to a slow start, but I am not sure the Roots can pull out a big performance on the road with this much roster chaos this early in the season. 1-1.
Jon
I pretty much completely agree with Bloom’s starting 11, except I see Rasmussen at LCB and Logue on the right side4–only because I’m not sure how Rasmussen is on his right foot and Logue is a veteran who can likely play anywhere along the defense. If the personnel was available, I’m probably putting Cedeño in the striker role. Because of that, I think its an undercover important game for Chery to show what he can do leading the attack.
I’m sticking with my RootsPod shout for a 2-1 Roots win.
Aaron
Ditto on the lineup from me, too. Here’s to hoping that the Roots’ early season lineup chaos can work in their favor. Its not like there’s a rhythm to disrupt on the Roots’ side of things, and the complete unpredictability of their game plan can maybe throw Phoenix off their game for a few minute/long enough to get a couple goals. I’ll hope that Phoenix takes one more week to get on track. 3-2 Roots.
- Turns out they think your average person should understand that a reference to cannons in Charleston is a reference to the extremely famous World War I (?) defensive fortifications and not the highly obscure Civil War battle where their government killed American soldiers to protect their right to enslave black people. ↩︎
- Stupid beloved friend getting married in stupid Cincinnati. ↩︎
- I watched that match on my phone from the 415 section at Oracle Park, where a sub-.500 White Sox team won 1-0 on a 9th inning unearned run. ↩︎
- PWB Note: I don’t actually disagree with Jon here. ↩︎