departed the club two days after its regular season finale<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
OFFSEASON OVERHAUL: Feilhaber wasn\u2019t the only departure from Roots\u2019 technical staff this offseason. In mid-November the club announced longtime Sporting Director Jordan Ferrell \u2013 who had also served two stints as Head Coach \u2013 wouldn\u2019t return, clearing the decks for the arrival of Martin the following day and a broader restructuring that saw Dustin Cleaver appointed General Manager and Nana Attakora promoted to Director of Soccer.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Martin\u2019s experience in building a club year-by-year, though, is what can make Roots one of the most interesting stories in the USL Championship this season. Martin became Loudoun\u2019s manager at the time Oakland\u2019s first Head Coach Paul Bravo was leading the club. Since then, Roots has seen seven changes at the helm, a contrast to the stability Ryan offered as the second-longest tenured Head Coach in the league when he departed United.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also brought some of his former charges in Virginia with him to Oakland to help the building process, with defender Keegan Tingey, midfielder Tommy McCabe and forward Florian Valot all signing with Roots this offseason and potential impact-makers for the side.<\/p>\n
What Martin has found in Oakland, though, is talent like 2025 USL-C Golden Boot winner Peter Wilson that is eager to push the club forward as well, giving reason for optimism as Roots looks to set a new course this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to be pushed, and he wants to be a better version of himself, even at 29 and winning the Golden Boot,\u201d said Martin. \u201cHe thinks he has another gear in him, which I think as well. He\u2019s asked to be pushed as much as possible, and we\u2019re trying to push him to have a better season than he did last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since its launch, Oakland Roots has been a model for community-driven clubs off the field, but on-field success has been more hit-and-miss.<\/p>\n
Martin\u2019s appointment and approach to team-building has a chance to make Roots consistently competitive and elevate the club\u2019s overall profile accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Oakland Roots SC entered this offseason, it knew it needed to go in a new direction. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[100,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-199617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}