Roots fans it’s game day! The Roots, lead by USL Championship Coach of the Month Gavin Glinton, are in Pittsburgh to face the Riverhounds at 4:00 p.m. Pacific time at Highmark Stadium just across the Monongahela River from downtown Pittsburgh.
The Roots’ official watch party will be at Almanac at the west end of Alameda. Get there early so you can get through the 113 minute line for a Scolari’s burger. You can also catch it on ESPN+ or KTVU Plus.
Footnote.1
Pittsburgh Riverhounds
Riverhounds are one of the most consistently good teams in the USL and lead by Bob Lilley, a stalwart of the USL coaching game. So they’re a big threat that the Roots have to take seriously.
Oh, I see.
That three-match run with wins over Phoenix, Detroit, and Miami almost certainly has made the rest of the season just suck more for Riverhounds fans. The basic problem that Pittsburgh faces, since their defense is alright, is that their attack doesn’t do anything. They scored eight goals in those three wins plus the immediately following 2-2 draw away to Tulsa, and they otherwise have three total goals in their other fourteen games. That is a significantly worse goals per game rate than the Roots had under Delgado. They have three players each on three goals, Danny Griffin, Edward Kizza, and Kazaiah Sterling, although two of those for Griffin are penalties, and Sterling has not played since June 22. I corresponded with Colton Coreschi of Pittsburgh Soccer Now, who said that Sterling is hurt, but it is currently murky whether he will be healthy for this weekend.
Here is what Coreschi had to say about the Pittsburgh offense:
On offense, the Hounds biggest struggles this year are two-fold:
1) A rotated forward room (Kizza aside) haven’t found their finishing touch to replace the loss of Dikwa. They’ll often get tons of chances over the course of a match, but the final touch has been lacking. Sterling has shown flashes, and Emmanuel Johnson always gets into dangerous spots, but they’ve been partially unlucky, and partially non-clinical.
2) The Hounds have a very industrious, constantly pressing midfield, but lack a creative playmaker centrally. Mertz, Griffin, Sample, Walti, etc. are all high work rate guys, which makes for a strong defense that’s tough to break down, but have trouble finding a dissecting pass through opposing defenses. Most of the Hounds attack is generated via the wingbacks with Junior Etou and Langston Blackstock flying forward into space, and that tends to generate the most threatening chances for the forwards. Kenardo Forbes is the most creative player centrally, but he’s a step slow in his later career and hasn’t been what he once was there.
I asked Coreschi whether he sees a turning point ahead for Riverhounds:
Bob Lilley constantly tells the team to play forward, line-breaking passes, don’t sit too deep, play in the opposition’s half. But many of our central players have a tendency to retreat and play safely rather than risk being caught out, and that leads to disconnects with the forwards, leaving them isolated and with few meaningful touches. I think they’re not as far off from turning the corner as people think though. The defense is very, very solid, they don’t concede much. Haven’t conceded more than two goals since March and have had tons of one-goal results, late losses, etc.
More than overstaying my welcome, I asked him to pitch how this could be a trap game for Oakland:
If they can figure out any way to help the anemic offense, they’ll be picking up points. And they can be dangerous on set pieces around goal. If Roots aren’t careful and concede early somehow, it’ll be really tough to come back when the Hounds lock up defensively. I’m not sure I’d call it a trap game exactly, but I think the Roots need to be on their toes. Monterey got very lucky to score late and steal a win, the Hounds largely dominated that game. Any of those chances go in and it’s a tough situation for a visitor at Highmark.
Bob and the staff are convinced the talent is there, it’s just lacking execution moving the ball forward. I could see them going on a run if anyone can find some finishing form.
So there you have it. “Don’t concede early” is advice the Roots have needed in the past, and will be especially true against Pittsburgh.
Roots’ Form
I don’t know what to do with my hands.
Louisville were not quite unstoppable coming into this game, they had lost two of their last four, but they had also only dropped points in five total games all season. Louisville had been shut out a single time, and had twice as many games with 5+ goals as the Roots had games with 3 goals (the Roots have never scored 5). The Roots stopped them.
The Roots did not dominate Louisville. Things were even to start the match, maybe slightly favoring the Roots. Then Louisville upped the pressure but could not get on the board during that period towards the end of the first half. We named Cam Riley our Man of the Match for a good overall performance, but in particular for a clearance off the line in the 35th minute.
The Roots’ formation got shaken up a little bit with Justin Rasmussen needing to come off at halftime, moving Memo into his position and bringing Bryan Tamacas onto the field. Tamacas appears to have lost his starting spot, but this match potentially showed that that has lit a fire under Tamacas, who looked good over the second half. The second half started with some possession by Louisville, but it came to nothing, and in the 55th minute the Roots got an attack started when a long pass from Blanchette was headed on by Johnny to Chery who came wide, dragging defenders with him, and passing to a relatively open Johnny now at the top of the 18-yard-box. The defense closed down before Johnny could rip a shot, but he backheeled a pass to Lindo in the middle of the D who took a one-time curling shot and put it off the attacking-leftside post.
Five minutes later, the Roots took the lead. Chery and Njie worked together to win the ball centrally, and Chery knocked a pass through to Lindo at the edge of the 18-yard-box. Lindo dropped his shoulder and managed to use his tiny little legs to sneak past the Louisville central midfielder. The keeper definitely thought the shot was coming, and Lindo sagely squared the ball to a wide open Johnny Rodriguez for the tap-in. Despite the trickery, the keeper almost got a leg up to block the pass, but Lindo and Johnny would not be denied. An exquisite bit of skill from Lindo, and great interplay between the forwards. Chery’s pass was perfect, as it was on Lindo’s shot off the post previously, and Johnny had the relationship with Lindo to make the right run, and to be ready when he got the pass.
As I said on RootsPod this week, Lindo looks like a different player this season and/or under Gavin Glinton. Noah may well feel a little cheated that Lindo came back too late to save his job, but as Jon observed, Lindo was around a lot of last season and nowhere near this productive. It might be a better injury recovery than previously, but I think at least some credit has to go to the way Gavin has this team set up. Lindo has three forwards of different molds to work with: Johnny, a traditional central striker playing as a right winger; Chery, a traditional central striker who has struggled to find form under Delgado; and Njie, a fullback. Lindo has all of them contributing. This team’s absolute best results have typically come with Lindo on the pitch, see e.g., the Phoenix game in Delgado’s first season. But even with that in mind, I am not sure there has been a purple patch from Lindo quite like this, and as I said, I think that might be to Glinton’s credit.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Colton Coreschi (https://pittsburghsoccernow.com/)
From the man himself:
As far as lineup, I think we’ll be in our typical 5-3-2:
Dick (GK)
Blackstock – Osumanu – Hogan – Biasi – Etou
Mertz – Griffin – Sample
Kizza – Mushagalusa
You could also see Walti in for Sample in midfield, or potentially Forbes who will only play 60 mins if he starts, or sub around the 60′ if off the bench. He doesn’t generally go 90.
At forward, it’s more of a crapshoot, Bob is just trying to find the hot hand. Kizza feels likely as the vet, he’s high on Mushagalusa there and his pace. Johnson has been dangerous but struggling to finish, he’s a potential start there too. Diene seems to be in the dog house a bit, but getting some sub looks. Sterling is also an option to start.
Final score prediction: 1-1. I’d love to predict a Hounds win, and maybe they can find an offensive breakthrough, but predicting more than one goal right now is tough lol
Bloom
I think the Roots run a similar lineup to last week, but I am assuming that Gagi is fit and Rasmussen is still out.
Gagi traveled, but he did not even dress last week against Louisville, so I think it’s reasonable to assume that he will be a sub and that Riley stays in central defense and Napo stays on. In that case I would actually still leave Napo out and play Donasiyano alongside Gomez, but I mean, you all knew I’d say that anyway.
I predicted 1-0 on RootsPod and I stand by that. I think the Pittsburgh defense is good. I caught a lot of shit on reddit for predicting a bad result against Louisville, but that’s not why I’m not predicting 0-0. I’m thinking about it, but it’s not why.
Jon
I’m agreeing with Peter’s prediction above. With Rasmussen out after suffer a head injury, I’m plugging in Memo at LB and Tamacas at RB. Another option is moving Njie to LB and reinserting Reid to the starting lineup–but I’m going minimal changes.
Let’s go. I think Glinton’s team shows they are capable of beating bad teams. Roots with a historic 5-1 victory.
Aaron
I cannot think of a more obvious trap game scenario than the one the Roots currently find themselves in. They hosted arguably the best team in the league, beat them, and now have to travel 2500 miles to play a team that is decidedly not the best team in the league. This would be like a top 10 Cal Bears football team beating rival UCLA, and having arguably the biggest game of their season against USC in two weeks, but first having to travel to play, like, Arizona or someone irrelevant in between those games, and getting out to an early lead before letting their foot off the gas. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Anyway, the key here will be to make sure you score, and that you surrender fewer goals than your opponent does. Here’s what I propose: no defense. Now, we’ll have our usual compliment of “defenders” on the field, but they’re playing midfield. We’re taking last week’s 5-5-0 formation and making it 0-5-5. Gotta overwhelm that stout Riverhounds defense, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem like much defense is needed to counter Pittsburgh’s attack. I think Oakland gets it done. 1-0 Roots.
- There were basically two options for Pittsburgh-based musicians. One is, obviously, Wiz Khalifa, but putting “Black and Yellow” up here is almost certainly too much positive vibes towards the Riverhounds. I also just saw him on Jimmy Kimmel’s Password show and it was weird. The other is Anti-Flag, who I saw play at the Regency Ballroom as co-headliner with Reel Big Fish and while the Venn Diagram of fans of those two bands has a lot of overlap, the non-overlapping parts of the fan bases are very different. That tour was the 20th anniversary of Turn the Radio Off and it was more 7 years ago, in case any of this is relevant to you and yet you still aren’t feeling old. ↩︎
How’d that work out for you?