Roots family, game day is upon us again! Roots are back home to face Orange County Soccer Club at 7:00 p.m. at Pioneer Stadium on the Campus of CSU East Bay in Hayward, California, on Saturday, May 18. The Roots are celebrating AAPI Heritage Night, and pre-match entertainment will be provided by Seiji Oda. Is the entire Roots project just a roundabout way for Edreece and Tommy to meet musicians they like? All signs point to yes.
OCSC
Well well well, if it isn’t our old friend Orange County Soccer Club. OCSC sit in third in the Western Conference, 4-3-2, ahead of Monterey Bay on goal differential (and have a game in hand anyway). Their offense is bad, which is to say, they have only one more goal than the Roots through one fewer match. With Milan Iloski playing (or, apparently not playing) in the Danish Superliga, Orange County are in search of a consistent goal threat. Leading the team with three goals is Thomas Amang, who played for Orange County last year and the years before with San Diego and Colorado Springs.1
Brian Iloski is the only other player with multiple goals. In a weird quirk, Orange County have five shutouts, but no games with only a single goal conceded. After a 3-2-0 start, things have gotten dicier for them. On April 13, they drew 0-0 away to San Antonio. On April 20, they hosted Sacramento and lost 2-0, maintaining 57% possession but registering only a single shot on goal.2
Orange County then beat Monterey Bay 2-0 at home, a game that Chuy Enriquez started. Orange County drew Loudoun United in the Round of 32,3 in one of if not the only cross-country match-up in the round. Loudoun are having a lousy start to the season,4 but got the win in addition to the 6,000 southwest points.
This past week, County traveled to Louisville and picked up a 3-0 drubbing which is, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, a below average offensive performance for Louisville at home this season.
Orange County mustered only three shots on target in the match. They are 23rd of 24 teams in USL in terms of shots on target per 90. There’s no need to look up who is 24th. It’s probably someone bad like Vegas or Miami. The highlights suggest that Orange County had more chances than that SoT indicates, but Louisville essentially swatted them away.
One bit of encouragement for Roots fans is that the Orange & Black Soccercast folks, who graciously and inadvisably hosted me on their pod this week, were agreeing that Oakland is a difficult road trip for them to try to right the ship. I also understand they have a number of injuries. :shrug emoji:
Roots Form
Watch if you want, I mean, whatever.
It wasn’t terrible, there just wasn’t much to believe in, either. The new formation looks better, but there’s just basically no offense and it’s not clear when we’ll see Dwyer or how the offense moves forward without him.
I feel like I got more aggravated about this game than I would otherwise have except, (a) Tiger’s Taproom, while a clean and friendly place to get a beer, is a godawful place to watch a soccer match exactly like anyone who had ever been inside it could have told you, and (b) much of the Roots’ front office was at the bar as well, also watching us tepidly pass the ball to New Mexico’s defense. It was probably a better performance than, say, Colorado Springs.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Bloom
I thought I would suggest a little variation to what Jon and Aaron have below, but I’m not necessarily picking mine over theirs. I think Reid has shown some signs of improvement, and he has so much pace he just needs some modest improvement in any attacking area to become a real threat. I think you have to have Diaz and Tamacas and Rasmussen on the pitch based on their form. The Roots had moments, and some entire good halves of play in the last two weeks, but it hasn’t been enough. It has also been a tough road schedule. Let’s back them at home tonight and see if they can’t steal three points off of a decent but struggling Orange County team. (I predicted 1-1 on both RootsPod and the Orange & Black Soccer Cast, so I feel obligated to stick with that).
Jon
Okay, I’ve gone cold on Dwyer starting, I’m thinking another split of Johnny and Trayvone up top with Cedeño in the CAM spot. I’m scrapping the previous midfield split of Koze/Gomez in favor of wider options with better service in Njie at LM and Memo at RM.
2-nil Roots, the first clean sheet victory since August of last year.
Aaron
This could be a slog. These teams combine to average just 5 shots on target per 90. Of course, that being said, we are likely to see some kind of wild, up-tempo, end-to-end match with like 7 goals. But I think for the moment the Roots have to set up like 1-0 is the goal. So here’s what I’m proposing: 2 strikers and 8 defenders. Make sure OCSC can’t find a way through. Roots have faced more than twice as many shots on target as they have generated this season. The way back starts with undoing that issue. Let’s begin by playing the most defense. 2-1 Roots.
- Amang played in 2016-2018 for Molde. The 2017 team featured as bench forwards Amang, Ottar Magnus Karlsson, and Erling Haaland. Those three average 7 goals per season in the premier league. ↩︎
- Sacramento scored in the first minute through Trevor Amann, and I suspect that it was all just a big misunderstanding. ↩︎
- Loudoun Round. ↩︎
- Loudoun lousy round. ↩︎