Roots fans it’s game day once again! Roots host El Paso Locomotive at 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time at the historic Oakland Coliseum. Roots will be celebrating AAPI Roots in the stadium. For those who can’t make it, the match will be broadcast on KTVU Plus and ESPN+. I think Roots also announced that the season ticket holder gifts will be available for pickup, but in the era of short-form video announcements I’ll be damned if I can ever find any information that this team publishes anymore.
Roots’ Form
Well, there’s really two ways of looking at Roots’ last match. On the one hand, they dropped points to a team in the bottom of the Eastern Conference. On the other, Loudoun are almost certainly better than their record and Roots had to face them on the back of a 3,000-mile journey across three time zones and still found a late equalizer. I’m erring on the side of the latter. Despite conceding two, I don’t think either was particularly a sign of overall defensive weakness. Spiegel probably should have done better. But for the injuries on the back-line, I think it remains the case that GK is the position where a new signing would make the biggest difference.
Locomotive’s Form
.El Paso played midweek away at their rival New Mexico United. Somewhat interestingly, it’s a three-and-a-half hour drive from El Paso to Albuquerque, home of their closest rival. For some perspective for people who are fans of European soccer, that’s basically the roadtrip distance from Brighton to Leeds.
Rubio Rubin’s opener is, uh, the kind of thing that will give you nightmares if you’re planning on having to defend him. He creates space out of nothing and scores calmly. The good news is that Greg Hurst’s brace were both goals that look very much like things that Peter Wilson could replicate.
Prior to this match, El Paso had struggled after a blistering hot to the season. On this week’s Pod, Aaron attributed this to the absence of Gabriel Toerres, who received a straight red early in Locomotive’s 4-1 thrashing at the hands of Tulsa.
Is the World Better or Worse than Last Match?
The war in Iran continues question mark?
This week, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the redistricting, which could in effect, hand four congressional seats back to republicans this fall. To amend the state constituion, as was required here, The Virginia legislature has to pass the amendment, then a state legislative election has to occur, and then the legislature has to pass it again, and then it goes to referendum. Ostensibly, this allows the electorate to vote the bums out if they don’t like the amendment (of course… that same electorate has to pass the referendum…) Anyway, the reactionaries on the Virginia Supreme Court determined that there was not an intervening election because the first pass of the amendment occurred after early voting had started for the intervening election. All of that is to say–pure hackery. The governor of Virginia should just pretend it didn’t happen.
Match Predictions
Bloom
I can see 2-2, but I think the Roots are going to do it at home, so 2-1 Roots.
Jon
[pending?]
Aaron
[pending? Check out Jon & Aaron’s predictions in audio form on this week’s RootsPod]