Roots fans it is cup day! The Roots travel to Spokane, Washington to face USL League 1 team Spokane Velocity in the first round of the inaugural Jagermeister Cup. The match will be at 4:00 p.m. Pacific at One Spokane Stadium and will be broadcast on ESPN+ and KTVU Plus.
Spokane Velocity
I like Spokane. I did not expect to like Spokane, but in the fall of 2023, Amy and I took a trip out to the Palouse to see her friends from her days in Pullman and spent a night in Spokane hanging out with her brother (whose presence in Spokane is largely coincidental to Amy’s connections to Pullman). While we were in Eastern Washington, we were treated to seeing 2025 #1 overall pick Cam Ward lose to unranked Stanford at home in the pissing ass rain.
Anyway, this past Christmas, my brother-in-law sent us a bunch of Spokane Velocity and Spokane Zephyr gear.
Spokane Velocity’s ownership group are disappointingly normal, with the money coming from investment advising, high-level executive work at Starbucks and Amazon, Eastern Washington Real Estate, and a regional brewery. The team’s website includes this perplexing claim, “Katie is now the only woman president of a professional soccer club that includes men’s and women’s teams.” They appear to be distinguishing from the Roots and Soul because the Soul are not yet professional, which I guess is a fair point, but one not actually made as written.
Unfortunately, I spent a good 20 minutes dunking on the Spokane Zephyr badge, forgetting that the Zephyr is the women’s team, and the men’s team is Velocity, so you get significantly worse1 analysis.
“Unique bridge shape of VELOCITY?” I mean, it’s one capital letter where you would expect and one in a slightly different place than you would expect.
Velocity is off to a pretty good start as an organization. They finished their first season in 7th, 7-6-9, eliminated 2-seed Northern Colorado in the first round 3-0, eliminated 3-seed Forward Madison 5-4 on penalties, and lost in the final to a strong Union Omaha side. Northern Colorado and Madison are the two teams Wolfgang Prentice has been loaned to, but I won’t be reading anything into that (Prentice actually played 53 minutes for Madison in that game, but did not take a penalty–foolish).
This season, Spokane is off to an even better start. They sit second in the league with a 3-2-1 record and a +7 goal differential, the best in League One. They were knocked out of the Open Cup 2-1 by, oh look at that, Tacoma Defiance. Velocity’s one league loss is to league-leader FC Naples. Tied for the team lead for goals are MLS/USL veteran Luis Gil and our old friend Anuar Pelaez, each with three. Another five goals are spread among some players I have never heard of.
Roots’ Form
Two league wins on the trot, plus a mid-week cup loss where the Roots were the better team. It’s 7 points of a possible 21, but it’s something and it’s a big improvement on 1 point of a possible 15. More importantly, I think, it’s a proof of concept–this front three of Sinisterra, Prentice, and Wilson can force mistakes, jump on them, and get the ball into dangerous arears. Prentice can finish under pressure and Wilson can give opposing defenses headaches. Sinisterra, though, man, what a player. I recall at the beginning of the season thinking that Sinisterra showed some stuff last season and I was excited to see what he could do with a full offseason. I was still underestimating him. He just looks so technically gifted.
I did not actually watch this game live (or, for that matter, more than about 30 minutes at all). We figured since we already had our son in Lower Alabama, we might as well take him across the border to Mississippi, so we took a little mini-roadtrip down to Ocean Springs and the game started while we were at a crawfish joint getting lunch. On the drive home I asked if someone could pull up the game and let me know how things were going, which both my mom and Amy decided to do, with Amy’s app and my mom’s google search varying degrees of behind. So at the 8 minute mark and 31 minute mark, my wrist started going crazy with discord notifications, I’d ask if anything had happened in the game, they’d both say no, and then four mintues later, one or the other would say “Oh, the Roots scored.” It was a hell of a way to experience a game.
If you want some context on what happened, read our serious writer’s work. Or check out RootsPod.
Lineup and Score Predictions
Bloom
I was overconfident with how the Roots would do against Tacoma, even though I thought Gavin would rotate a lot. I do not think that the Roots rotate nearly as much against Spokane. I suspect the League really wants the Championship teams to treat this cup as a real competition, given that they canceled league games and (at least the Roots) are broadcasting on the normal broadcast and playing in their league stadium (when they return to Oakland). I checked with friend of the blog John Morrissey (@usltactics on bluesky), who watched most of the Saturday games, and he estimates teams are playing about 75% normal starters, and that is basically what I was thinking from the Roots. Maybe rotation in a position or two if someone needs rest or you need to see how someone returning from injury can fit into the newly functional system (Hi Cam! Hi Panos!). But I think the rest of the lineup will be the team we saw against Orange County so that they can continue to develop as a unit.
I’m predicting 3-1 Roots, with Pelaez scoring one for Spokane and one for Oakland.
Jon
Screw it, I’m running back the same exact starting lineup from last Satuday against Orange County. My logic is that this is looking like Glinton’s A-team right now, and with time to rest before next weekend’s game against San Antonio, I think it’s a good time to build chemistry against a team they should expect to play well against.
I’m sticking with my shout on RootsPod of a 3-1 Roots win.
It’s worth noting that the Jagermeister Cup’s primary tiebreaker is goals scored, meaning Oakland needs three goals to match Las Vegas after they beat Orange County 3-1 on Saturday. Only one team from each group is guaranteed to go through, so goals are vital.
Aaron
On the subject of rotation, it is basically the status quo for this team, so we could see quite a bit of rotation and it would look like any other matchday XI. Like I said on the pod, though, I have to think they’re taking this competition seriously. One reason to add to those I articulated on the pod: we cannot possibly lose two consecutive cup matches to teams further down on the pyramid. As in, the Roots need to do everything possible to ensure that doesn’t happen. I expect a reasonably normal starting lineup, and, as I said on the pod, a 2-0 win that feels solid defensively, but maybe lacking in attack, as the team continues to try and experiment.
- [insert funny footnote] ↩︎