The Oakland Roots were defeated 3-1 by USL League One side Spokane Velocity on Saturday afternoon, July 11, at Merritt College in Oakland, in their final match of the 2026 Prinx Tires USL Cup.
The outcome had no bearing on Oakland’s elimination from the tournament, as they had already been mathematically eliminated before kickoff, but it put Spokane on top of the USL Group 1 standings following Sacramento Republic FC’s loss to AC Boise later that afternoon.
The Roots opened the scoring in Saturday’s match with Spokane just moments after it began. 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 second minute.
Oakland continued to put pressure on Spokane’s 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. The 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 minute.
Following that leveler, momentum began to swing in favor of Spokane and in the 55th minute they found a gamewinner 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 2-1 Velocity.
Spokane continued to look like the hungrier side in the match, making the score 3-1 in added time, 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.
The 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 22, 4 p.m. Pacific Time.
Talking with the head coach
After the match, Roots Head Coach Ryan Martin offered his overall thoughts on the team’s performance, the match result, and the future of the for this season.
“You want to win games as much as possible,” he said, “but in my experience, the only way to help kids grow and become better players is to have experiences like this. 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.”
The biggest takeaway, he said, “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. …We have to stop gifting goals. That’s something we just have to continue to clean up and work on. But overall (it was) a good day for the club because we saw some of the future of what this club can be.
Summary
Scoring:
- OAK: Neveal Hackshaw 2’
- SPK: Neco Brett 34’
- SPK: Neco Brett 55’
- SPK: Anuar Pelaez 90’+
Discipline:
- SPK: Neco Brett 18’ (yellow card)
Oakland Roots SC
Lineup: Bobosi Byaruhanga (Tommy McCabe), Tyler Gibson, Neveal Hackshaw, Jackson Kiil (Charlie Wachs), Tucker Lepley (Luka Rosić), Julian Bravo, Raphael Spiegel (Alejandro Caracheo Luna), Emilio Martinez, Bradley Roberson, Faysal Bettache (Ali Elmasnaouy), Danny Trejo
Unused subs: Wolfgang Prentice, Jesus De Vicente, Keegan Tingey, Michael Edwards
Line: Shots: 13 | Shots On Goal: 4 | Corner Kicks: 5 | Fouls: 8 | Offside: 2
Spokane Velocity FC
Lineup: Michael Fitch, Collin Fernandez (Nil Vinyals I Cierco), Neco Brett (Anuar Pelaez), Luis Gil (Nicholas Spielman), Shavon John Brown Jr. (Moses Mensah), Camron Miller, Medgy Alexandre (Lucky Opara), Derek Waldeck, Ibrahim Covi, Carlos Merancio Valdez, Andres Lewis
Unused subs: Mark Hernandez, Sean Lewis
Line: Shots: 10 | Shots On Goal: 5 | Corner Kicks: 2 | Fouls: 13 | Offside: 3
