May 13, 2023 – United Soccer League Championship (USL) – Oakland Roots News Release
Following Oakland Soul’s inaugural home match – a historic 1-0 win over Olympic Club – the Oakland Roots made it six points out of six for Oakland soccer after a convincing 3-0 win over SoCal rivals Orange County SC on Saturday night.
Just after the half-hour mark, Roots won a 50/50 ball in front of OC’s box; the ball fell to Darek Formella on the far post, who rifled the ball home with gusto for his team-leading fourth goal of the season. The club-record 5,855 fans in attendance flew into a frenzy.
Roots doubled their lead three minutes before halftime. Off of a short corner kick, Lindo Mfeka volleyed a cross into the near post and defender Tarek Morad rose to head it home.
Oakland kept the pressure high in the second half. Rito was particularly successful on the right side, winning several corners and wreaking havoc in the OC box.
Defensively, Roots held strong and won most balls in the midfield or on the flanks. Paul “The Wall” Blanchette came up big in the 72nd minute when he dove to save a header from OC’s Milan Iloski.
For all of his labors, Rito finally got his goal and Roots’ third late on in the match. Thanks to a nifty pass from Johnny Rodriguez, he took a touch and then lashed it into the bottom corner in the 78th minute.
Oakland Roots head to the central valley next to play against Norcal rivals Sacramento Republic on Saturday, May 20th, before returning home to face San Diego Loyal on May 27th.
Hearing From Head Coach Noah Delgado
Noah, this was a big win. Seven goals in two games isn’t too shabby – give me your initial takeaways from the match?
In other games where we didn’t get results our performance has been very high. We didn’t get a couple goals in a couple games and I thought we were pretty unlucky. Tonight, though, the ball went in.
I thought we played some good balls – building, finding players in between lines, finding penetration and players in the box – so I’m just gonna keep harping on things we need to work on and keep to our principles.
Take me through the game plan tonight and how the boys executed it?
Just working on players rotating a bit while staying in shape. I think the versatility of our team, the players understanding what we want, we can see good things coming out of it. There was a lot of good movement off of the ball today.
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