It was perhaps one of Oakland’s most dominant performances of the 2026 season thus far, but in the end Roots could not find a game winner, eventually drawing 0-0 with visiting Miami FC on Saturday night at the Oakland Coliseum.
Roots took control of the match in the early phase of play, maintaining possession and asking questions of Miami’s backline.
In the 20th minute of the match, Oakland nearly capitalized on this momentum when an inswinging corner service from Florian Valot found Michael Edwards on the far post nearly poking it home. But the Miami keeper recovered his position just in time to make the save and clear it from danger.
Both sides went on to trade massive scoring chances for the remainder of the half, with Roots holding a slight edge in the number of opportunities they generated, but the halftime whistle blew without either side finding the back of the net.
Oakland dialed up the pressure in the second half even further, testing the Miami keeper regularly with quality finishing attempts.
Despite looking as if they deserved to take the lead after holding constant pressure for the better part of the second half, Roots had to be content with earning a point in an eventual 0-0 draw.
The club will be back in action in short order as Roots return to the Oakland Coliseum this Wednesday, June 17th for a league fixture versus Birmingham Legion at 12 PM PT.
Talking with Head Coach Ryan Martin
Overall thoughts on tonight’s performance, the clean sheet, and earning a point to move into third place?
Yeah, I think when you look at the performance, I thought it was quite good. I thought we created enough chances to score a goal. I thought, obviously, the clean sheet was key to what we were trying to do. That’s something we’ve been focusing on recently.
We had some really good moments and got into some good positions, and we couldn’t score, and you know, have the final play. They obviously came in with a plan to sit deeper, and they had five center backs on the field, and one playing right wing back, so they obviously came in trying to slow us down.
The good news is we still created enough, and we just didn’t finish them, and that’s significantly better than not creating anything and not finishing, so for us it’s a positive, it’s plus one point, shut out, and at the end of the season when we look back every point will matter.
