Roots fell 1-3 to USL League One side Spokane Velocity on Saturday afternoon at Merritt College in their final match of the 2026 edition of the Prinx Tires USL Cup.
While the outcome of the match had no bearing on Oakland’s elimination from the tournament, having already been mathematically eliminated before kickoff, the loss gives Spokane a shot to win Group 1 and advance to the knockout stage pending results of Sacramento Republic FC’s match versus AC Boise.
Roots opened the scoring in Saturday’s contest just moments after it began when an early corner kick from Faysal Bettache found Neveal Hackshaw on the far post, heading it in to give Oakland a 1-0 lead in just the 2nd minute.
Oakland continued to put pressure on the Spokane backline, but it was Velocity who would find the back of the net next when Roots keeper Raphael Spiegel had to leave his position to attempt a clearance near the top of the box. This clearance attempt deflected off of Spokane’s Neco Brett and landed back at his feet for an easy tap into the empty net to make it 1-1 in the 34th.
Following the leveler, momentum began to swing in favor of Spokane and in the 55th minute they found a game winner after Brett found space in the box and fired a rocket into the top right corner to earn his brace after receiving a good outlet pass from Luis Gil to make it 1-2 Velocity.
Spokane continued to look like the hungrier side in the match, and in added time made it 1-3 when former Roots player Anuar Pelaez made a run up the right side and fooled Oakland keeper Alejandro Caracheo Luna with a touch to walk it in for the dagger.
Roots will now return to USL Championship league play for the remainder of 2026, heading to Kentucky for their next match versus Lexington SC on Wednesday, July 22nd at 4 PM PT.
Talking with Head Coach Ryan Martin
Give us your overall thoughts on the performance, the result today, and the future of this team for the season.
Yeah, I think, you know, you want to win games as much as possible, but in my experience, the only way to help kids grow and become better players is to have experiences like that. So while we’re not thrilled with losing, you’re never happy with losing, I was very pleased with some very positive performances from some of the young guys. At the end, we had five plus Ali on the field, when you’re looking at academy kids, you had a goalkeeper make his pro debut, and we had some really good moments.
I think the biggest takeaway is we had a lot of momentum after we scored the first goal, and we should have finished it and had a second. I think the game looks very different if you find a second. When you make a mistake, you let teams back into it and have belief. And to gift goals, we have to stop gifting goals. And so that’s something we just have to continue to clean up and work on. But yeah, overall a good day for the club because we saw some of the future of what this club can be.
