Roots fans it’s Prinx Tires USL Cup Game Day again! Roots host nemesis Sacramento Republic at 5:00 p.m. Pacific at the historic Oakland Coliseum in a match that the teams may or may not take seriously. Gripping!
Sacramento is pretty much the only city still reliably getting the “post a song by a band from that city” treatment because there’s about 1,000 songs I love by Cake. [Editor’s Note: this feature has not run on a Sacramento post since 2024].
Prinx Tires USL Cup Standings
As a reminder of the format, each team in the group plays four games (thus, not playing everyone in the group) and at the end, the winner of the group advances with one wild card going to whichever non-group-winner scored the most total goals.
After the first round, Sacramento is alone atop, with every other team dropping some number of points. Boise and Monterey play today and Spokane and Vegas play on Sunday.
Roots don’t mathematically need to win this game, but it gets very, very dicey if they only draw. What we want to see in that scenario is a lot of draws so no one builds separation. A shootout win for Roots is an okay result, but a real problem is that Roots don’t want to be sitting behind Sacramento after their head-to-head. If Roots are going to draw, pull for it to be like 5-5. There are a lot of teams already at 3+ goals, although many of them have played their second round game already. Roots absolutely must be in that mix after this round if they don’t come away with the three points and honestly they probably want to just in case.
Sacramento’s Form
They can’t complain about their spot in the table, which is fifth, but they would catch the Roots by winning their game in hand, and take the top spot if they their two games in hand on San Antonio. Still, their form has been shaky in recent weeks, by their standards.
A 1-1 draw away at Las Vegas is a lousy result for a team angling for a conference title, and a 1-1 draw away against Brooklyn is a very comparable result to Roots’ 2-2 away draw at Loudoun (which is to say, a result we rationalized but were ultimately somewhat disappointed in). Orange County are, of course, a quality opponent, so that win will embolden Republic some.
In their first match in the Prinx Tires USL Cup, Sacramento thrashed Spokane Velocity. Sacramento’s first two goals came on counterattacks when Spokane’s defense pressed up too high, which is insane for a lower division team on the road against a competent first division team.
Those Sacramento kits, unfortunately, whip.
Okay, it’s also worth checking out these Sacramento – Orange County highlights because it looks like an insane game. Penalty; Saved; Controversial offside non-call; a bunch of normal goals; Danny Vitiello makes three outrageous saves; Sacramento get an insane penalty with a minute left; it’s saved and then the rebound put in.
Danny Vitiello makes some annoyingly great saves in this game.
Roots’ Form
Continues to be pretty good, with some concerning caveats!
El Paso had three huge chances in five minutes, two of which found the back of the net (although one was flagged offside). Roots got back into the game and then took over when El Paso got a red card for (ostensibly) tackling Wolfgang from behind when he was through in on goal. The contact is hard to see, although Wolfgang certainly goes down in a way that suggests his ankle was clipped.
Anyway, the Roots struggled to actually do much with their possession until Peter Wilson made a little magic right at the end of the first half. The second half was better but the Roots couldn’t find that necessary equalizer until newly arrived loanee Tucker Lepley scored the USL Championship Fans’ Choice Goal of the Week, presented by Select, to secure all three points for Roots.
Is the World Better or Worse than Last Match
President Trump met with Xi Jinping in a trade summit in Beijing that President Trump might remember tomorrow.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid from Virginia Democrats to overturn the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of the democratic-backed gerrymander. This is not overly surprising to me but it’s still not good.
So we’re going with “holding pattern,” which isn’t great when the benchmark was already “straight up dogshit right in your goddamned face.”
Match Predictions
Bloom
1-1 shootout win for Roots. As I said on this week’s RootsPod, if Roots are chasing by more than a goal at half I think I start rotating for rest and to get some bench players minutes rather than try to chase a win.
Jon
I think we can expect a similar lineup to what featured against Monterey in the last cup match, which is a mix of usual starters in the lineup and on the bench. I’m interested to see who is on the subs list and when they make an appearance.
2-1, Roots.
Aaron
The rumblings are that we’ll see plenty of rotation in the starting lineup, which I support, of course, but it does seem a little disrespectful of the “Hometown Heroes” to whom the match is dedicated. Anyway, rest is good. These guys are pros, obviously, but the question is not “can you play 35-40 matches in a year,” but “at the end of the year, when the other team is operating at 95% of their peak, can you match them, or are you at 92%,” because margins like that can matter. So I hope we see at least one guy out there that only the real degens would recognize if they saw them in Safeway. 3(5)-3(4) Roots.