Roots fans it is Open Cup game day! The Roots enter the U.S. Open Cup tonight in the third round with an away fixture at 7:30 p.m. against MLS Next Pro team Tacoma Defiance. The match will be on Paramount Plus. This will be a pretty abbreviated post, as it is a midweek game and I am trying to get work done before travel on Thursday. Roots played Tacoma Defiance four times in 2021 back when there were still MLS B-teams in the USL Championship. Roots won two, drew one, and lost one. Out of those games grew the enmity that all Roots fans1 feel towards Tom Brewitt (see explanation here). Roots’ one loss, though, featured this Declan Rician banger from Wal Fall.
I choose… defiant jazz.
Defiance’s Form
Defiance are 2-0-2, leading MLS Next Pro with 12 goals scored, ahead of many teams that have played two more games. At the other end, Defiance have conceded 10 in four games.
I am going to look most closely at Defiance’s victory over Spokane Velocity (USL League 1), but briefly I want to point out that Defiance’s most recent game in the league was a 3-2 loss away to LAFC 2 in which Defiance took a 1-0 lead in the 15th on a penalty, then LAFC 2 went down to ten men, and then LAFC scored twice, then Defiance scored again, and then Defiance got a red card, and then LAFC got a winner on an 88th minute penalty.
Defiance’s leading goal scorer, with five goals in three games, is 23-year-old San Jose native Osaze de Rosario, son of Quakes legend Dwayne De Rosario. The younger Rosario played in the Toronto and NYCFC academies, and he was dealth to Rukh Lviv, where he was starting to break through into the first team when Russia began its war of imperial conquest. De Rosario played in the Canadian Premier League for a bit and signed with Defiance last season. De Rosario was “loaned” to Sounders during the 2024 season for some open cup matches. Defiance’s second leading goal scorer, with four goals in four starts, is Yu Tsukanome, who played for his Japanese College team in 2022, Dakota Fusion of the NPSL in 2023, and Defiance since 2024.
Also of note is Rafferty John Pedder, which sounds like a name Key & Peele would make up for a soccer East-West College Bowl. Finally, Defiance currently employs Travian Sousa, who real Roots sickos will remember from the 29 minutes he played for Oakland Roots in 2021. Only someone completely out of their mind would really dig into his contribution for the Roots, especially when they are overwhelmed with trying to get work out the door before leaving on a trip.
Sousa played 1 minute against Sacramento (subbing on for Johnny Rodriguez), 28 minutes against Phoenix Rising (subbing on for Johnny Rodriguez), and 22 minutes against Orange County in the conference semifinals (subbing on for Memo Diaz and then being subbed out right at the death for Yohannes Harish in order for Harish to participate in the penalty shootout). In his time for the club, Sousa touched the ball twelve times (11 passes, 7 completed; 1 shot).
I think there is a really good chance that Sousa holds the record for the Roots for playoff minutes played as a share of total minutes played, and my guess would be that next on the list is Dom Dwyer. Surely no one would bother trying to figure that out.
No really this one seems so hard to figure out, but it’s gotta be him.
In the first round of the Open Cup, Defiance eliminated Washington Athletic Club, “a competitive group” that competes in the Greater Seattle Soccer League and is affiliated with Seattle’s version of the Bay Club or Olympic Club. Defiance won 3-1 with two goals from the aforementioned Tsukanome (not counted in his four league goals).
Hosting Spokane Velocity in the second round, Tacoma jumped out to a lead in the third minute.
Velocity’s line was led by familiar face Anuar Peláez who, in a performance Roots will be familiar with, did not score. Velocity equalized in the 78th on… not really very much but a great pass from Collin Fernandez (I think). Google tells me that Tacoma’s winner was an own goal by the Velocity keeper, but it looks from the video like it was just a save that he missed and the ball continued into the net. Still, Tacoma got the winner in the 98th minute and held on for the win.
Roots’ Form
POINTS BABY LET’S GO WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Roots’ opener came on a great pass by Danny Gomez over the Tulsa’ defensive line and a (very offside) Sinisterra wisely allowing a (very onside) Wolfgang Prentice to take the ball into the box and beat the keeper to the far post. Tulsa equalized in the 42nd on another (the third?! fourth?!) worldy that the Roots have faced so far this season, this one a curling top-corner shot from 22-ish yards out. Its the near post so maybe McIntosh should get it, but that shot looked like it was about 95 miles per hour. Roots got what would be the final goal of the match in the 6th of 7 first-half stoppage minutes when Peter Wilson did extremely well to control a pass, at speed, into the Tulsa box, then drew the pressure onto himself and unselfishly passed to a wide open Wolfgang Prentice who just had to tap the ball in. Prentice waited just about as long as he could before another defender was going to come up on him. I have given Njie a lot of shit over his stint with the Roots, and so I should credit him with winning the ball that lead to the first goal and sending the pass to Wilson for the second.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Bloom
This is what I circulated to Jon and Aaron on Sunday and I think it’s basically my prediction. I would say there’s a decent chance Bobosi does not start (since he played last weekend and will play again this coming weekend, barring injury), but he has not played as many minutes as the other starters and Glinton may want to get the minutes in. If not Bobosi, I think we see one of the 510 graduates that we have not really seen much this year, either in midfield, or on the forward line with Ali pushed back to midfield. The same could be true with Saldaña, but he has seemed to be the next 510 guy in line for real Roots minutes after Ali, Camier, and Alekseev, so this would be a likely game for Gavin to just put him in even if its on the wing rather than through the middle.
One win does not mean that the Roots’ problems are fixed, although it has given significant reason for optimism. I am not currently saying the Roots’ problems are fixed. But I don’t think the Roots’ problems are so severe that they cannot swat aside the Sounders’ kids team.
4-1 Roots.
Jon
I reached out to Jon and Aaron and asked for their predictions, to which Jon replied “Jesus Fucking Christ, dude, it’s 4:26p.m. on game day, I just assumed you weren’t doing a post.” I also assumed I was not doing a post. Anyway, here is the lineup that he had sent to our private discord2 earlier this week along with a score prediction I had to nag him to send.
2-0 Roots.
Aaron
Aaron flat ignored my message asking for predictions. I predict he would have predicted 2-1 Roots and that either Jon or I got the lineup basically correct. Probably Jon. Could be me, though. Hard to tell.