For the first time in 2025 Oakland are winners at home. After a dominant first half and a defensive showcase in the second Roots move to 2-1-4 in the USL Championship, defeating Orange County SC 2-0 at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday afternoon.
Roots began the match looking hungry for a goal. Their attacking pressure in the final third even without possession led to numerous turnovers and extended periods of looking dangerous up front.
This tenacity didn’t take long to pay off. In the 10th minute of the match, an Orange County turnover on a pass towards their own back line led to a shot in close from Roots forward Peter Wilson which rebounded off the keeper and back to Wilson who played an easy cross in front of the net to linemate Wolfgang Prentice. Prentice struck a ball to the right side beating the out of position keeper, scoring his fourth goal of the season — his third in Roots’ last two USL Championship contests — and putting Oakland up 1-0.
Following the goal, Orange County began to work their way back into the contests, earning their best scoring chances of the first half. But this momentum shift was short lived. Oakland soon went right back to work on offense, hemming Orange County into their defensive third and moving the ball brilliantly around the pitch.
In the 31st minute Oakland doubled their lead. On a counter attack opportunity, Roots pushed numbers quickly up the field and into the Orange County area. A cross from the left side of the field landed at the feet of midfielder Jürgen Damm just to the right side of the goal who waited patiently before chipping it short over the defense to find Wilson who elevated over two defenders and put a header off the post and in to make it 2-0.
The second half saw Roots begin to drop back a bit to protect their lead. Orange County began to hold an advantage in possession time, but despite this, the Oakland defense as well as a few key plays by goalkeeper Kendall McIntosh frustrated the Orange County attack throughout the second half.
Roots kept their 2-0 lead into the final whistle, earning their first home victory of 2025. The squad will now head back out on the road for their first action in the Jägermeister USL Cup as they prepare to face USL League One side Spokane Velocity for a Group Stage fixture on Sunday April 27th at 4 PM PT.
Talking with Head Coach Gavin Glinton
What are your initial thoughts on today’s win?
Super happy, ecstatic with the result, getting a shutout, first win at home. Really happy with the effort and the commitment that the guys put in. I thought the attention to detail and the game plan worked out well. We were able to hurt them where we wanted to hurt them. And I thought we were probably unlucky not to have maybe one or two more tonight, so yeah, just really happy with where we’re going. I think a couple of tweaks that we’ve made over the last couple weeks have really started to work out for us. But most importantly, I think it’s the identity that we’re starting to see and starting to come out. And yeah, let’s keep it going.
That looked like the most complete performance of the season so far. Just talk about that, what went into it, and how this could be a catalyst going forward.
Obviously three games in a week with a lot of travel hasn’t been easy, with rotations and a lot that went into the last week. And so credit to the guys for being able to manage it well. I thought we showed really good fight. And have improved some of the things we haven’t really done well in terms of attention to detail against Tulsa in last weekend’s match, I thought the match against Tacoma was probably our best attacking match, and where we start building a little bit of that other side of the identity that we want, our ability to now control the match and be able to possess and put teams under. I thought we did a really good job with our repressure. And so the goal today was, can we put both of those together into one match? I think we made big strides in that respect. Still a ways to go, but we’re starting to see our ability to fight and our blue collar as well as our ability to be aggressive and force teams to be uncomfortable. I’m really happy with that.
Oakland Roots SC vs Orange County SC
USL Championship | April 19, 2025
Venue: Oakland Coliseum
Kickoff: 1:00 PM PT
Weather: 63 degrees, sunny
SCORELINE:
OAK: 2
OC: 0
SCORING SUMMARY:
OAK: Wolfgang Prentice 10’
OAK: Peter Wilson 31’
DISCIPLINE SUMMARY:
OAK: Wolfgang Prentice 38’ (yellow card)
OAK: Neveal Hackshaw 45’+ (yellow card)
OAK: Bobosi Byaruhanga 54’ (yellow card)
OAK: Baboucarr Njie 57’ (yellow card)
OAK: Jürgen Damm 67’ (yellow card)
OAKLAND ROOTS LINEUP: Kendall McIntosh, Baboucarr Njie (Justin Rasmussen), Julian Bravo, Wolfgang Prentice (Panos Armenakas), Peter Wilson, José Luis Sinisterra (Daniel Gomez), Tyler Gibson, Neveal Hackshaw (Gagi Margvelashvili), Bobosi Byaruhanga, Jürgen Damm (Ilya Alekseev), Kai Greene
Unused subs: Camden Riley, Raphael Spiegel, Ali Elmasnaouy, Luis Saldaña
Shots: 9 | Shots On Goal: 6 | Corner Kicks: 7 | Fouls: 20 | Offsides: 1
ORANGE COUNTY LINEUP: Colin Shutler, Nicholas Benalcazar, Tom Brewitt (Vukashin Latinovich), Kyle Scott, Ousmane Sylla, Bryce Jamison (Christopher Hegardt), Pedro Guimareas (Ashton Miles), Lyam MacKinnon (Cameron Dunbar), Kevin Partida (Benjamin Barjolo), Mouhamadou War, Ryan Doghman
Unused subs: Gavin Karam, Daniel Garcia, Tetsuya Kadono
Shots: 10 | Shots On Goal: 2 | Corner Kicks: 7 | Fouls: 7 | Offsides: 3
