Roots fans it is game day! Your Oakland Roots make their long-awaited return to Oakland, California at their new home, the iconic Coliseum! Roots host San Antonio F.C. at 7:00 P.M. with a half-time concert by Too $hort and after-match fireworks.
Roots are coming off of two losses where a leaky defense prevented results despite signs of offensive potential that they simply never showed last season. Their opponent, San Antonio F.C., are a defense-first team that appears to have gelled with two shutout home wins to start the season, including a win over mutual-opponent Monterey Bay.
New to Roots and USL?
Roots are advertising that 26,000 tickets have been sold or distributed to this game, which would set an attendance record among current USL teams (F.C. Cincinnati did better in their last season before jumping to MLS). If you are attending your first Roots game, and somehow ended up on our website, you might lack some context on what is going on here.
Oakland Roots were founded in 2018 and were originally set to compete in the NPSL but withdrew in favor of NISA, a relatively newly formed third-division competition featuring a lot of teams you have likely never heard of. Roots competed in the 2019-2020 NISA schedule, which was curtailed by COVID, and ultimately in September of 2020, Roots announced that they were leaving NISA to jump to second-division USL Championship.
The USL is a pyramid unto itself, organizing on the men’s side the second-division Championship, third-division League 1, and amateur/developmental League 2, and on the women’s side the second-division USLW and the first-division USL Super League.1 The USL Championship is, without question, a step below MLS simply in terms of the money available and what kind of players that money can bring in. The USL Championship is also, however, pretty clearly a step above any other US-based club competition and likely better than any other North American league with the exception of Liga MX.2 Part of the fun of the USLC is that it features teams from a lot of cities that are smaller than the usual suspects that have one or more “Big Four” teams. USLC features teams in Albuquerque, Monterey (California), Hartford, Providence, Lexington, Louisville, El Paso, Colorado Springs, and now, sadly, Oakland.
The playoff structure in USLC is very, perhaps overly, generous, and so even though Roots have only had one season with more wins than losses, they made the playoffs in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2025. In 2021 and 2022 they knocked off higher seeds in their brackets, El Paso Locomotive and San Diego Loyal.3 In 2023 and 2025, Roots failed to progress out of the first round, however in every season Roots have somehow been eliminated by the eventual overall champion.4 Last season saw Roots stumble backwards into the playoffs after sitting as high as 2nd in the Western Conference midseason, and then while they did not get blown out by Colorado Springs Switchbacks, they did not ever really look likely to win either.
Roots’ offseason remains something of a mystery. Up top Roots brought in Peter Wilson, who excelled at the lowest levels of professional soccer in Scandinavia, and EJ Johnson, a 21-year-old Fairfield native who hopefully has a lot of room to develop. The big offseason signings were Panos Aremenakas, a creative midfielder in his prime who has carried two teams in the USL in the last several seasons, and Jürgen Damm, a Mexico international known for his speed who might still have legs. Roots kept a lot of the same defense and midfield, but let stalwarts Memo Diaz and Johnny Rodriguez walk.5
Roots’ Form
Look, it could be better.
The good news is that we have some offense. On only four occasions last season did Roots put up two+ goals in back-to-back games, and yet they have done that to start this season. The biggest part of that has been Jose Luis Sinisterra, who looks great, and his delivery to Cam Riley for the opening goal against the Otters was exquisite. Jon got this excellent shot of Cam’s celebration:
Sinisterra also, of course, scored in the second half to make it a game, although the Roots could not complete the come-back. His goal came on some delightful interplay with Wilson and Aremenakas. Monterey Bay’s goals are… concerning. They scored another worldie, but the shooter had plenty of time because of defensive miscues, so it’s not exactly just bad luck.
San Antonio’s Form
Oh cool, so they just don’t concede goals.
Jorge Hernandez6 is in so much space for San Antonio’s opener that it’s hard to see how he was onside, but we’ll never know because of USL Championship camera work. Still, the pass to him is really nice and he does well to control the ball with his chest, evade the keeper, and give himself the shot on an empty goal.
San Antonio’s strength is its centerback partnership–Mitchell Taintor and Alex Crognale–but any team in the league would take Hernandez in their central midfield.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Peter
Damm and Wilson got their sub minutes last week, so I am picking them to start. I am most uncertain of the Riley-Mohamed-Hackshaw trio, as I think that there’s a chance Gomez starts in midfield and Riley starts at CB or RB. Spiegel did not make the bench at Monterey Bay, so I do not see him starting yet. Sinisterra and Armenakas are both locks, and Gibson, Rasummsen, Greene, and McIntosh almost certainly start based on the last couple of weeks.
I predicted 1-1 on RootsPod this week to jeering and mockery by my cohosts, but I will stand by it. San Antonio do not look like they plan on conceding much, and I am not sure the Roots are keeping a clean sheet right now. My more important prediction is that everyone will have a good time.
Jon
I think this is an aggressive lineup that could pose some trouble for San Antonio’s tough defense. With Damm at right back, it enables Wolfgang Prentice to stay on the field at LW, keeps Sinisterra on his preferred side, and allows Riley to play the central midfield role–where I think he’s best suited.
As for the score, I predicted a 2-1 win on RootsPod. But with an offensive-minded lineup, I’m revising things: Roots win, 3-2.
Aaron
Editor’s Note:
Midweek I received a call at my office phone from a blocked number. The caller identified themselves as “Geof, with a G and one F,” who said he had been hired on Taskrabbit7 and that Aaron, who is out of town, had retained him to call me and ask me a favor. Specifically, Aaron hired some contractors to board up “the gaping maw to the ABYSS” in his basement and Aaron needed me to check that they had turned off the lights and locked the doors on their way out. He said there was a spare key in the lock box on the porch. I asked Geoff why Aaron hadn’t just hired him to go himself and the line went dead. I got the to house around 8:40 and sure enough there was a light on in the basement. I was able to guess the lock combination ([redacted]’s jersey number and [redacted’s] jersey number). The ground floor was empty except for a handful of dog toys in the front room and a power drill and hammer in the living room. Plush and squeeky. The dog toys, not the hammer or drill, at least at first glance. Most of the basement of the house is an aging lounge with a formica bar that the prior owner had used as a sort of 1970s den. I checked all the windows in the basement and one had been left unlocked. As I was leaving I noticed a half-empty Coke Zero and a bag of off-brand cheese puffs that I figured would attract vermin if I left them out until Aaron got back. As I reached for them, my eyes were drawn to the sizeable hole in the floor behind the bar surrounded by unused lumber and assorted hardware. The room was pretty dark to begin with, and the bar cast a shadow across the hole, but I still thought I should be able to see the bottom. It surprised me that the job had been left undone, but the contractors probably just needed another day. On my way out, I stopped to hit the basement stairs light switch–the offending light that had drawn me out of my car and into the house to begin with–and saw, etched into the switch escutcheon, “2-1 Roots.”
- Several of these divisions did not exist when Roots joined. ↩︎
- I don’t follow other leagues particularly closely, but when given the opportunity, the best players from other leagues tend to choose to jump to USLC. ↩︎
- RIP ↩︎
- Eastern Conference fans hate when you bring up that they can’t win a title. ↩︎
- More on Roots’ offseason is available here. ↩︎
- Who oldheads will recall from his La Galaxy II days in 2021. ↩︎
- Please sponsor RootsPod ↩︎