Roots fans it’s game day again! Roots travel to St. Petersburg, Florida, where they will face off against perennial contender Tampa Bay Rowdies at 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time. The match will be available on ESPN+ and KTVU Plus.
I put a lot of thought into making it say “Tampa Bay Rowdeez Nuts” but it seemed like a lot of effort for a joke I don’t want my family to see.
Roots’ Form
The Roots had an early bye week coming off of a frustrating performance against Orange County–Roots’ first loss of the year. Prior to that loss, I was not sure I would’ve wanted an early bye given the Roots’ momentum. However, the loss showed some of Roots’ weaknesses that have appeared but not necessarily killed them in the prior games this season. Hopefully the bye gave Ryan Martin some time to figure out how to improve on that, as well as getting some guys ready to start who started the season nursing injuries. It should also mean Peter Wilson is back from international duty.
Rowdies’ Form
Tampa Bay are always good, but maybe not this year?
Shit.
The only team that has even scored on the Rowdies is Charleston Battery, who are undefeated other than their 3-1 loss to Rowdies. John Morrissey has Tampa Bay as the #1 team in the USL and it is tough to argue with that. Tampa Bay actually had a pretty disappointing 2025, finishing in tenth, and rebuilt the team in the offseason. In particular in attack, Tampa Bay added MD Meyers, who scored 30 goals in 60 games for Charleston Battery in 2024 and 2025, and Russell Cicerone, who we are thrilled to have get the hell out of Sacramento. It is hard to state how complete the overhaul is–I think the Rowdies may actually be starting more new guys this season than Roots are.
Anyway, you guys wanna watch some goal highlights?
All four goals in this match are awesome. Y’know what’s not awesome? Roots starting Kendall McIntosh, who really struggled against shots from distance in 2025, against a team that apparenty loves shooting from distance.
If you’re looking for reasons for optismis, the Rowdies’ most recent match was a 1-0 win in Jacksonville over bottom-of-the-table Sporting Jax in the first USL Championship Dirtbag Derby. It took the Rowdies until the last 30 seconds of second-half stoppage time to find a winner.
I don’t think this has any predictive value, but interestingly, Roots won their last match against Tampa Bay in Hayward in 2024. In their other home match against Tampa Bay they drew 1-1, but both of their trips to Al Lang Stadium have resulted in 3-0 hidings.
Is the World Better or Worse than Last Match?
Well, it seemed like it was going to be worse as of Tuesday, when the orange one declared that “he would “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Obviously that’s just irredeemably evil but it’s also such dramatic villain-posting. Our slurry-brained, failed-real-estate-and-mail-order-steak-tycoon president posting like he’s fucking skeletor. At the eleventh hour he announced a cease-fire brokered by some mediators that by the next morning (Pacific time) was revealed to have either not actually been agreed, was certainly not memorialized in writing, and was unclear whether it bound allies. The Israeli government, never shying away from murdering some neighbors, just continued bombing Lebanon, either breaching the cease-fire or, honestly more likely, having at no point indicated to the buffoons in the white house their intent to accept. So that’s bad, although it kinda seems like it was just cover for Trump to follow someone’s good (good-ish, I mean, we’re grading on a real steep curve here) advice to not bomb all of the vital civilizan infrastructure in Iran.
So there’s no cease-fire, and the hypothetical cease-fire that was hypothetically agreed gave Iran the shared right to toll shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which is pretty good as environmental policy but pretty terrible in terms of funding a theocratic nightmare state. I saw speculation that Oman, owning the other share of tolling, might have promised to funnel some under the table to Trump, y’know, funding the other theocratic nightmare state.
To sum things up, I think we have to say things are worse than they were for the last game, because things are not better at home and every week of war is worse than the week before for the people suffering in Iran. But things are not as bad as they looked like they were going to be at points this week.
Hooray.
Late edit: there are further ceasefire discussions, so that’s good. And the Artemis mission returned safely, which was very cool. Check out the pictures if you haven’t.
Match Predictions
Bloom
I am not optimistic about this one. Roots have some critical personnel back, but we still apparently do not have a right back. Tampa Bay are really good. Cross-country travel has been brutal on Roots in the past, although maybe that will be mitigated by the bye week rest for Roots. I think the Roots get a point, 1-1, which actually should probably count as optimism.
Jon
Peter Wilson is back, and I think you can expect Florian Valot to make his debut. The back three experiment doesn’t seem worth the gamble, so I can see it going back to Michael Edwards/David Garcia at the CB spots. Roots will have to fill in at RB, so I’m going Tyler Gibson there.
I’m with Aaron, 3-2 Roots with a quick goal in the first 15 minutes.
Aaron
Tampa Bay has scored 3 in both of its home matches this year. The Roots historically have some issues in the Eastern Time Zone. Tampa’s defense this season so far has been top notch. Roots are still figuring things out in attack. You could be forgiven, I guess I am saying, for thinking the Roots are the underdog here.
But, to me, this has classic “surprise Roots performance” written all over it. If Lindo Mfeka were still on the team he’d get a brace, that sort of thing. A week off to work out some kinks and get some newer guys settled in means the Roots will come out firing. 3-2 Oakland.