Roots fans it’s game day! Roots travel down to face Orange County Soccer Club at 7:00 p.m. on June 29 at Championship Soccer Stadium in beautiful (?) Irvine, California. Roots are entering off of a loss and Orange County off of a win, yet the fan-bases could not be further apart in terms of confidence. The teams sit fourth and seventh in the Western Conference, in the thick of the seven-team melee that is the four-point gap between second and eighth.
Orange County SC
Orange County are seventh in the table, but have two games in hand still on several teams above them. Their fans are concerned as Seth Casiple, Brian Iloski, and Ethan Zubak all have injuries that looks to sideline them for a stretch of games. Orange County also sold their manager, Morten Karlsen’s, contract to a Danish team, and have named Paul Hardyman as interim manager. This is a good time to be catching Orange County, although they are at home, and they are still a competent team. This past weekend, they took the points from Eastern Conference contender Indy Eleven in Indy.
Roots’ Form
We’re going to still characterize the Roots’ form as pretty good, notwithstanding a lousy game down the coast.
In a game where Johnny Rodriguez scored one of the best goals you’ll ever see, unfortunately the game turned on Rodriguez’s failure to put away the easier chances that would have given the Roots a draw or a win. Chuy Enriquez, who played with the Roots in 2021 and 2022, came on in the 19th minute to replace an injured Carlos Guzman. The Roots struggled for long periods of the game to deal with Chuy’s speed and elusiveness. Chuy helped get the ball forward in the play when Union took the lead in the 30th minute when Tristan Trager ghosted behind Niall Logue and headed in a ball that just cleared Logue’s jump. Shortly after half-time, Union doubled their lead when the Roots pressed far up the field, and got punished on a breakaway off a turnover. Johnny’s banger in the 64th gave the Roots some hope, and the Roots found more opportunities, but those largely dried up in the 84th when the referee issued Koze a second yellow card. The ref weirdly delayed a long time in issuing the red, as though he had forgotten that was a second yellow. I am not certain that the foul the ref saw actually occurred–I think the Union player may have tripped. If there was contact, then I think the second yellow is not egregious, but I am left wondering if the referee would have given a card if he’d known it would send a player off. Union picked up a second yellow in stoppage time, but too late for the Roots to get back in the game.
On the whole, I thought the Roots outplayed Union and were unlucky to end the match without any points, although not so unlucky as to feel like it’s an injustice. More importantly, I think there is every reason to think that the Roots we have seen under Glinton are real and will continue to compete with other mid-table Western Conference teams.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Bloom
I was confident when I predicted 2-0 Roots on the Orange & Black Soccercast earlier this week, and I remain pretty confident. I don’t know if Glinton was rotating so much last week because of the fixture congestion or because he’s still working out his favorite line-up, but I think he will have a lot of options for this match and a good idea what he wants. I think the Union match is also a warning about rotating too much, as the Roots looked short of some of the cohesiveness they’ve developed under Glinton. I think he picks his favorite eleven, at least given the unavailability of Gagi and Koze, for Orange County without an eye towards upcoming fixtures, which is exactly what Jon predicts below. I think that favorite eleven takes it to County in Irvine. 2-0 Roots.
Jon
With Gagi ruled out, I’m going Hackshaw/Logue as the CB combination, while Rasmussen returns to LB and I’m leaning Memo over Tamacas–we’ll see who is Glinton’s favorite tonight with a well-rested group. With Koze serving a red card suspension, I’m going Napo and Riley to provide a strong defensive midfield. As for the attack, I think the four are currently Glinton’s preferred options. Maybe Dywer comes off the bench to provide a spark at some point, but I’m going in confident.
Orange County are in a weird spot, as illustrated by Bloom in this week’s podcast, I’m going with a statement 3-0 Roots victory.
Aaron
As I write this on Friday, I’m having a hard time thinking much about soccer, and because I don’t really have my own social media I am about to subject you to a brief version of what I’m dwelling on instead. The Supreme Court is in the middle of a mad dash of opinion releases, and seems to have challenged itself to see whether it can make each one worse than the last. Yesterday gave us Moyle v. United States, in which the Court decided not to decide whether EMTALA, the statute governing the provision of emergency services in federally-funded hospitals, preempts, at least in some circumstances, a law that prohibits abortions, even if one is necessary to save the pregnant person. The fact that this is a question is galling—of course the federal law applies in that situation—but the Court was at least up front with us that this is only a reprieve, and that the ostensibly squishy part of the conservative majority likes the argument that the Congress’s Spending Clause authority can be undercut by state criminal laws, a rule that is clearly grounded in reason and would not be subject to any kind of manipulation or abuse, I say with my eyes rolled all the way into the back of my head. This morning, we first got the opinion in the Grants Pass case. I have strong feelings about this opinion, too, but it isn’t relevant to my current rant. In brief, the rule espoused by the Court of Appeals—if a city doesn’t have any place for someone to sleep, you can’t throw them in jail for sleeping outside—is obviously correct as a legal and moral matter, and its ridiculous we’re pretending otherwise. Grants Pass was followed up quickly by Loper Bright, in which the Court ruled that agencies do not actually have any flexibility in administering statutes. Instead, statutes mean whatever the courts, and, let’s be real, likely what the whack jobs in the Fort Worth district court, say they mean. The only point of this ruling is to make it difficult to govern this country. But that is the point for lots of rabid conservatives. The Supreme Court basically gave itself veto power over administrative policy, and you get three guesses whether the current Court will exercise that veto power differently depending on the party in the executive branch. The first two guesses don’t count.
So anyway, any day (like today) in which I am reminded that the current Supreme Court majority has very little respect for America is bad enough. Today might be particularly worrying, though. I’m sure many of us either watched, or have seen the takes from, Thursday’s debate. Many people with big platforms are wringing their hands. Whatever. I do not think that “ability to perform under weird, one-off debate conditions” is a valid way of gauging who is more fit to be in charge of the executive branch. It is fashionable, at least on social media platforms controlled either by interested foreign powers or untrustworthy tech oligarchs, to ignore the very real gains made by the current administration in things like workers’ rights, green energy, and income inequality. In the right setting, I think these arguments are good. If the question is “do we need to do more?” The answer is “obviously yes.” But let’s get one thing straight. The question in November is not “do we need to do more?” Its “are we going to try to do more, or are we going to try and use the entire power of the federal government to punish people that racists don’t like in order to make, like, used car dealers in the rural midwest feel better about their unfulfilling lives?” There’s an obvious answer, particularly when we can be sure that one side’s vindictive excesses will be cheered on by whatever passes for the Supreme Court right now.1
Anyway, eat at Arby’s. 1-0 Roots.
- PWB Note: I echo and stand by everything Aaron has written here. ↩︎