For the first time this season, Roots have fallen in back-to-back regular season fixtures following an 0-1 loss to visiting Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday evening.
The match began as some have for Oakland this season, conceding a goal early when in the 5th minute a cross in from the right side of Roots’ penalty area took an unfortunate deflection off of Oakland’s Michael Edwards and into his own side’s goal to make it 0-1 Colorado Springs.
Following this opening goal, Colorado Springs looked to smother Roots’ attack for the remainder of the contest. They did so successfully, as Roots were not able to muster a shot on target for the entire 90 minutes of the match.
While the Switchbacks’ offense also struggled to find openings in the Oakland backline, their early goal proved enough as the final whistle blew with the scoreboard still reading 0-1 Colorado Springs.
Roots will now return to Prinx Tires USL Cup play, as the club heads to Las Vegas for their next matchup, a group stage fixture versus Lights FC on June 6th at 7 PM PT.
Talking with Head Coach Ryan Martin
Your overall thoughts on the result tonight?
Yeah, I think it’s a disappointing result. You know, I think we were disappointed with our start to the game. I think we lacked a little energy, and it felt a little bit off. And I think it’s something we’ll look into, you know, everything from preparation to the plan, and you know, obviously it’s a good opponent as well, but it was just an off night it felt like.
This was actually the first time Colorado has kept a clean sheet this season, what made them difficult to break down tonight?
I think they sat a little bit deeper in their block. I think they obviously did a really good job in terms of their scouting and figuring out where we want to get to, and I think that combined with us not being sharp and not being overly dynamic in our movements, I think you know it was a recipe for their first clean sheet, and like I said, it’s a good team, they did a great job, and you know they won the league recently for a reason, and a lot of those guys are still around.
What, if anything, can you take away from this to turn it into a positive and motivate the guys this week?
I think it’s a search for consistency. I can accept the loss last weekend when we play really well, we made three mistakes, and we are an aggressive team. And I think today when you have zero shots on goal, I think you got to look in the mirror into how we get consistency and find more of where we were last week. We’ve always phrased this as we want to grow every week and every game, and you know, the best soccer is still in front of us, and we’re still chasing it, and this is a tremendous opportunity to find consistency.
