Roots Fans! For our sins, it is once again game day! If you can drag yourself out to the historic Oakland Coliseum, you can bear witness to the Roots hosting regional rival Monterey Bay F.C. at 7:00 p.m. The match will also be on KTVU Plus and ESPN+ if you would like cheaper beers and and easy way to pivot to a more uplifting use of your Saturday night if/when things go belly up.
Around the Western Conference
We’re still not really out of it because the Western Conference, as a whole, continues to stink the joint up. Pretty inspiring stuff!
Look, we skipped the RootsPod this week because we weren’t sure what we could say about this team that would be worth listening to and the main news since we made that decision is that Trejo is out. So, y’know, I appreciate you reading and I will be trying not to waste your time here.
Monterey Bay F.C.’s Form
Roots’ Form
Not great. Peter Wilson has been scoring a lot, though, so that’s sorta fun.
Match Predictions
Bloom
Apparently the President hasn’t been seen in a day and a half and has no scheduled appointments this weekend.1 Who knows if it’s going to happen. Probably not. But it would be kinda fun if it happened during a Roots game.
Jon
Peter called a major presidential announcement once; maybe he can do it again.
Danny Trejo has been ruled out, so I’m probably running back a similar lineup as the last match. Danny Gomez starts, and maybe keep Wolfgang Prentice in at LWB to give Roots a little more attacking power. We’ll see what Feilhaber’s midfield looks like. Bettache and Bobosi have looked good, but maybe its time to throw Elmasnaouy back in the mix.
Roots 2-0.
Aaron
I echo Peter’s sentiments above, although I am pessimistic because the Roots are not scheduled to appear on national television this weekend, which I think is a prerequisite for major national news to occur.
I was reading the season preview put together at MGoBlog (the college football blogosphere’s answer to The Economist) the other day and I was knocked over by this line: “I have to admit, folks, that spending time talking about Bryce Underwood in the Year Of Our Lord 2025 feels like chatting about your favorite fruit moments after the engines cut out on the plane.” (Bryce Underwood is Michigan’s big QB recruit, and, worryingly, QB1 to start the season.) You could replace the Bryce Underwood portion of this sentence with pretty much anything about sports these days. This week I think I felt it the most, between the shooting in Minneapolis, RFK’s new vaccine nonsense, increasingly infuriating ICE shenanigans, increased threats to the City of Chicago, and attempted meddling with the Fed. At this point, it isn’t just that the engines have cut out. We are rapidly losing altitude here. Anyway, it maybe isn’t all bad: blue states have begun to make concrete moves to challenge or undermine some of this nonsense (for instance, many are talking about buying COVID boosters and administering it themselves, and we have the brewing redistricting fight), and also the president might be dead.
Anyway, I’m glad we have the fruit that is minor league soccer to chat about. There was no pod this week because Jon was too dejected to talk about the Lexington result. Jon obviously forgot about two of the major rules for watching the Roots: 1. Things are never as good or bad as they look, and 2. Eastern time zone performances are likely to be unrepresentative. Anyway, I’m sure the fellas will bounce back. Peter Wilson is in a groove, and Monterey Bay is decidedly not. Honestly, if the boys are motivated, this could get ugly. I mean, it won’t. But it could. 6-2 to the good guys.
Also, strawberries, with peaches a close second. And I feel the papaya is criminally underrated.
- Editor’s Note: Someone purported to be the President was seen, looking like absolute shit, getting into the presidential motorcade to go to Trump’s golf course. I am told that Weekend at Bernie’s is set on Labor Day weekend. ↩︎