It was not fun to be a Roots fan on Tuesday night.
I went to the game alone – too humiliated to ask my partner or a friend to spend money on any Roots game, let alone a weeknight – and sat in GA Section 130. I climbed over the seats from Row 30 to 28 to give some space to a spider and its multi-seat web, and sat down to watch my favorite soccer team.
“When I got here, this wasn’t a soccer team,” Benny Feilhaber said about the state of the Oakland Roots after the game.
Not fun.
“Anyone that expects a team that, where it was four months ago, to be consistently not only turning in these [good] performances, but also turning them into wins has unreasonable expectations.”
For the first 45 minutes, Roots were better than a Hartford Athletic squad that won a cup final three days ago. They still smelled faintly of cigars and champagne. But Oakland was tired and did not make a substitution until the 77th minute.
“At the end of the day, you got to have not only a starting eleven,” Feilhaber said about struggling to put together complete performances. “You got to have depth.”
The Roots lack the squad depth their coach trusts. The 1-0 first-half lead faded into a 1-3 defeat. Most of the crowd left after the late third goal to beat the Hans Zimmer traffic coming from the arena. Control of possession, field tilt, and chances created do not win games – good players do.
“Our team is not good enough to play as well as we did for 45 minutes for 90 minutes every single weekend,” the coach said about the result. “We have the quality to do it in spurts.”
The results make it not fun to be a Roots fan.
Oakland’s roster quality has been called into question since the preseason. The USL Tactics preseason model had Roots finishing second-to-last in the Western Conference with just a 42% chance to make the playoffs.
La Union 1852, a coalition of the club’s most vocal supporters, was talked out of a boycott by ownership and the front office at the start of the season. Now, nearly a full season later, there is close to no confidence among supporters that the people in charge of putting a soccer team on the field are going to turn this around.
Roots’ staff planned to defy national coverage and their fans, but the critics have been vindicated. This season’s roster was the most expensive in club history, and the results have been worse than ever. Any front office in professional sports would expect a fire under their seat in these circumstances.
Again, the technical staff’s decisions and quality of play on the field make it not fun to be a Roots fan.
The Coliseum security makes it not fun to be a Roots fan.
On the way out of the game, I saw Coliseum security staff harass street meat vendors for putting their carts too close to the gates. They yelled in a man’s face so aggressively that the general public stopped to watch and eventually helped him move his things. I hope he’s doing well.
Coastin’ by Zion I has led the Roots onto the field since their inaugural season – a tradition I have come to cherish. But the low-quality Coliseum sound system, and lack of coordination with supporters groups, has all but killed the special feeling that came with watching the Roots come onto the field. Drums blast over the muffled projected audio, which has become the Official Sound of Roots at the Coliseum.
Whatever fraction of the opening night’s attendance that was on hand watched my new favorite pregame tradition: the players, coaches, and officials standing in ready positions for 90 seconds while they uncomfortably stare up at DeeDotJones’s Tru2MyRoots music video on the Jumbotron.
The song is fire. But the timing of pregame festivities has left much to be desired. The atmosphere cultivated at home games makes it not fun to be a Roots fan.
The night’s Star Spangled Banner was performed by BART Lieutenant Josh Perez. In past years, the national anthem has been an understated part of an Oakland-centric pregame ceremony, but the days of Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock rendition of the song being played way before the start of the match are long gone.
Roots games no longer feel like an oasis in the cesspool of U.S. sports.
Now, we honor America in all its glory with the police 10 minutes before kickoff. 10 months ago, I would have called this Sacramentocore. It makes it not fun to be a Roots fan.
On and off the field, 2025 has been the hardest year to support the Oakland Roots. Home games lack life in a cavernous stadium that can’t be close to filled. Parking costs $40, and the tailgates are dying with the gates opening just two hours before kickoff.
But nothing is more important than making sure this soccer club has a good soccer team.
And Benny Feilhaber is the person for that job.
Benny is the first Roots employee to publicly say what fans and league-wide analysts have said all year: the Roots do not have a USL Championship quality roster.
He became the first Roots employee to speak directly to the discontent among fans. The first person to tell us that there obviously is a problem, but it can be fixed. To my memory, it’s the first time a Roots employee has publicly said that things aren’t on the verge of being perfect.
He was blunt in his assessment. It was an honest and, to my senses, accurate review of the roster he must maximize each week.
“I’m proud of the work that I’ve done. I’m proud of the work that the staff has done. I’m really proud of the work that the players have put in,” he said when probed about returning as Roots coach after a difficult season. “It’s disappointing, but I truly believe that we’re going in the right direction.”
The RootsBlog Official Discord channel agrees. Of the twenty-two Roots Sickos who responded, 17 said they would like to see Feilhaber back next year. And I agree.
His commitment to playing quality soccer has made the Roots better. His passionate honesty could be what builds something great.
Bring back the coach. And give him the reins.
I agree with most of this commentary, particularly about bringing back Benny. He has gotten the team playing much better than they were before he arrived, but as was said, not good enough to play well for 90 minutes. This was not his rooster and I was never sure if this was a selection of players that Gavin had made. It seemed it was based on the economic realities of a new team being built from the ground up by many local mostly relatively small time investors. An unusual but admirable way to build a community team, but not a likely way to afford more talented players. I’m sort of ok with this at the moment. To my mind the focus at the moment should be on building their own soccer specific stadium. The Coliseum has a lot of history and it’s great that it was available and bartable, but it’s old and a poor place to watch soccer and, arguably, American football, baseball and most field sports in general (multi sports stadiums are a mid twentieth century idea that saved cities money, only). Game experience will improve immensely when the Roots have control over security and food concessions. A smaller (25-30,000 seat) stadium will generate enough noise and fan excitement so that the non stop drum beat and amped up speakers will not be required to fill the space. I’m hoping that next season management opens the purse some and sign help, particularly for the back line and mid field. They can get stronger and more competitive, but I expect so will the rest of the USL. The question has to be, where will the Roots and Soul be five and ten years from now?
Well said. Thank you for putting in (poetic) words what the fans are feeling (not spectators who are showing up for “vibes”, concerts and fashion shows). Despite this, I am still rooting for our team even if uttering “Go, Roots” gets harder each time.