ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. \u2013 Cristian Nava and Zico Bailey scored first-half goals to lead New Mexico United to a 2-1 win against Oakland Roots SC before a season-high crowd of 14,847 fans as the hosts moved their undefeated streak to five games despite a second-half penalty kick by Peter Wilson for the visitors.<\/p>\n
New Mexico made an ideal start as Nava opened the scoring in spectacular fashion just six minutes in. The former Academy product brought down a lofted ball by Niko H\u00e4m\u00e4l\u00e4inen into the right side of the penalty area and with his second touch fired into the top-left corner of the net. United\u2019s Kipp Keller also hit the post with a header off a long throw-in from the right soon after, but Bailey doubled New Mexico\u2019s lead four minutes before the halftime break as Dayonn Harris\u2019 low cross found the Philippines international for a close-range finish.<\/p>\n
Oakland tried to rally in the second half as Wolfgang Prentice forced a good save by New Mexico goalkeeper Kris Shakes shortly after the break, but the hosts also continued to threaten with Harris having an effort palmed over the crossbar in the 54th minute. Roots cut the deficit in half on Wilson\u2019s 10th goal of the season as he converted from the spot after he was brought down in the box by Maliek Howell, but United put together a strong finish to the contest as Luther Archim\u00e8de went close to an insurance marker before Tommy McCabe\u2019s last-ditch effort for Oakland went off target, allowing New Mexico to hold onto the result. <\/p>\n
Takeaways <\/p>\n
New Mexico United \u2013 The hosts extended their undefeated streak in league play to five games with a strong all-around performance that sent them into the top three in the Western Conference. New Mexico has been excellent when scoring the opening goal this season, now extending its undefeated streak to 16 games when it finds the net first dating back more than a year, and the overall display in this outing was exactly what was needed.<\/p>\n
Oakland Roots SC \u2013 Roots simply wasn\u2019t at the races in the first half, being held without an official shot and recording only four touches in the attacking penalty area. While the visitors showed improvement in the second half, they were unable to find a way to make their advantage in possession tell, ceding third place in the West to New Mexico as a result. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. \u2013 Cristian Nava and Zico Bailey scored first-half goals to lead New Mexico United to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[100,143,145,144],"class_list":["post-386693","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\/386693","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=386693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}