Missed opportunities were the theme of the night for Oakland, as the Roots watched a dominant first half and a 1-0 lead devolve into a gut-wrenching 2-1 loss to visiting Phoenix Rising FC at the Coliseum on Saturday night, July 12.
The Roots came out swinging just four minutes into the match when Julian Bravo played a cross into the box from the left side, with Peter Wilson all alone in front and somehow missing any contact with the ball.
Phoenix came right back with a chance of their own on a counterattack that ended with a hard shot ringing off the left post of Oakland’s goal in the eighth minute.
Following both teams’ early missed opportunities, the Roots settled into the match and quickly began to look like the superior side, matching the shot total from their last match inside just the 14th minute.
The Roots continued to work the ball into extremely dangerous positions, but as has been a trend with the team lately, found trouble turning opportunities into shots on target.
Just like in their last match, the Oakland side broke the deadlock with their very first shot on goal in the 27th minute, when Bravo outhustled a Phoenix defender down the left side of the pitch. The centering pass just before the ball rolled over the endline found Morey Doner, who finished his third of the year off the left post to make it 1-0 Roots.
Oakland continued to dominate the pitch for the remainder of the half and entered the locker room at the break still leading by just one, despite numerous missed opportunities that could have easily led to a lopsided score.
In the 53rd minute of the match, the Roots missed on what was perhaps their most wide-open look on goal all season. A gorgeous series of passes led to a cross into the box that found José Luis Sinisterra all alone in front of the net with plenty of time to shoot. Sinisterra opted not to take a set-up touch, instead taking a chance on a one-timer that sailed well above the crossbar.
This moment immediately preceded the Roots unraveling in the match, as Phoenix began to shift the tide of momentum in their favor.
Phoenix capitalized on that shift in the 60th minute, when Ihsan Sacko worked a bit of space in the attacking third and unloaded one on his own from the top line of the box beating a diving Kendall McIntosh to the right to level the contest at 1-1.
The field continued to tilt in Phoenix’s favor following the goal, and they captured the lead in short order. In the 69th minute, former Roots player Charlie Dennis sent a low strike on target after receiving a centering pass from Jearl Margaritha that bounced through traffic before finding twine just inside the right post and making it 2-1 Phoenix.
In an extended time period, a second yellow card was issued to Phoenix’s Hope Avayevu, giving Oakland a man advantage for a final push that never came to fruition, as the final whistle ended with Roots still down by one.
It was a tough loss for the Roots, in a match that could easily have seen them win in lopsided fashion and secure a crucial six-point swing versus a conference foe in an extremely crowded Western table.
The Roots will now head out on the road for a league fixture versus Loudon United FC on Saturday, July 19, before returning home to face Orange County SC in a Group Stage battle of the USL Jägermeister Cup at the Oakland Coliseum on July 26.
Talking with the Head Coach
After the match, Head Coach Benny Feilhaber was asked to share his thoughts on the match.
“Losing is always frustrating,” Feilhaber said. “I think the guys feel it, and the staff obviously feels it as well.”
Speaking on the missed opportunities, he said, “Sometimes it’s a simple game. You go up, you create chances to go up more than one. We missed quite a few of those chances …At the end of the day, I told the guys, ‘If you don’t score in soccer you’ll get scored on.’ And that’s just the age-old story, right?”
Noting that the team created a lot of chances to score in the first half, but let Phoenix stay in the game, Feilhaber added, “The one thing that I was a little bit more disappointed with more so than the missing of the chances—because that tends to happen from time to time—is we were passive defensively. There were moments where their players, who are good one-on-one players, had time and space on the ball. In certain areas of the field that’s okay, but you can’t allow teams to have time and space with the ball close to your goal.”
Noting that the Roots were “a little bit passive” for both of Phoenix’s goals, which both were shots from far away, he said, “The only goals we’ve given up since I’ve been here have been shots from outside the box, I think. So we’ve got to do a better job in those areas to realize that you’ve got to go block the player. You’ve got to make them feel uncomfortable. I told those guys, even at 40 years old, if nobody’s going to come press me, I can still play the game. Any player on that field is going to feel really confident with the ball if there’s not somebody stepping in to them.”
Feilhaber said the Roots players need to “be more determined to close space, to be able to make people feel uncomfortable with the ball, and that’ll in turn make them make worse decisions and more mistakes.”
But it wasn’t just the goals that bothered the coach. It was the 15 to 20 minutes that led to the goals, he said. “Moments in the midfield, moments higher up on the field that we just weren’t right with the pressing, weren’t right with closing down space,” he said. That allowed Phoenix to get more confident as the Roots struggled in that area of the field.
Nevertheless, Feilhaber said, “I thought we battled well at the end of the game, got close on a couple chances,” even though it obviously was “disappointing to be up 1-0 and concede twice.”
Summary
Scoring:
- OAK: Morey Doner 27’
- PHX: Ihsan Sacko 60’
- PHX: Charlie Dennis 69’
Discipline:
- PHX: Hope Avayevu 33’ (yellow card)
- PHX: Xian Emmers 40’ (yellow card)
- OAK: Panos Armenakas 71’ (yellow card)
- OAK: Luis Saldaña 86’ (yellow card)
- PHX: Emil Cuello 87’ (yellow card)
- PHX: Hope Avayevu 90’+ (second yellow card) (red card)
Oakland Roots SC
Lineup: Kendall McIntosh, Julian Bravo (Wolfgang Prentice), Gagi Margvelashvili (EJ Johnson), Daniel Gomez, Peter Wilson (José Luis Sinisterra), Panos Armenakas, Neveal Hackshaw, Bobosi Byaruhanga (Tyler Gibson), Morey Doner, Kai Greene, Ali Elmasnaouy (Luis Saldaña)
Unused subs: Camden Riley, Raphael Spiegel, Julio Martinez, Ilya Alekseev
Line: Shots: 9 | Shots On Goal: 1 | Corner Kicks: 5 | Fouls: 15 | Offside: 2
Phoenix Rising FC
Lineup: Patrick Rakovsky, Collin Smith, Carl Sainte, Jearl Margaritha, Ihsan Sacko (Jamison Ping), Hope Avayevu, Emil Cuello, Dariusz Formella, Braxton Montgomery (Ryan Flood), Ascel Essengue (Darius Johnson), Xian Emmers (Charlie Dennis)
Unused subs: Triston Henry, Alexander Balanzar, Pierce Rizzo
Line: Shots: 8 | Shots On Goal: 3 | Corner Kicks: 4 | Fouls: 16 | Offside: 2
