Feeling out Feilhaber
What might the Oakland Roots look like under Benny Feilhaber?
What can we expect from the Benny Feilhaber era in Oakland? If you take the former Sporting Kansas City star at his word, we won’t know for certain even after his debut on the sideline this weekend.
”You’ve got to find out what kind of players you have and how they are best put together on a playing field, whether it be they fit into a 4-3-3 or 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 or whatever it is. Is it going to be high pressing? Do we have the guys that can do that? Do we have guys that can cover in the back in one-on-one defending?” questioned the new Roots manager on this week’s episode of USL All Access. ”It’s about getting to know the players before you start making all those decisions.”
It’s natural for a new coach to preach patience, but Feilhaber’s answer reveals something deeper-seated about his style. Throughout his three seasons at Sporting Kansas City II, Oakland’s new head man proved chameleonic in the way he set his team up. Some tactical concepts and preferred patterns stood out consistently, but formation and tempo were the means rather than the end.
Even if Feilhaber isn’t publicly committing to a style, his resume from MLS Next Pro – a net plus-seven goal difference and 1.48 points per game – is solid. The mix of results with vision is must be refreshing for a Roots team often devoid of an on-field identity.
I don’t say that to throw Gavin Glinton under the bus. Named Oakland’s interim manager last May and given the permanent title heading in 2025, Glinton inherited a roster that wasn’t his own and managed to make it a playoff squad. The Roots posted the USL’s third-lowest retention rate (47%) this offseason and have been even more aggressive in practice, awarding nearly 80% of match minutes to new players.
The results haven’t been up to snuff. Oakland sits 11th in the West and can’t buy a win against lower-league foes, after all.
Blending that many fresh faces together is hard, but where should the balance of blame fall? Glinton couldn’t bring it together, but as Jonathan Comeaux at Roots Blog pointed out, there’s a point where club president Lindsay Barenz and technical director Jordan Farrell are at fault. Decisions like the preseason Johnny Rodriguez sale, as lucrative as they may’ve been, have come at a cost.
Put the squad management aside, and it’s evident that Glinton couldn’t nail down a style. Oakland has experimented with different shapes and styles in 2025, yo-yoing between a more direct system and a possessive alternative. Neither produced offensive results, nor did they prevent opponents from putting the Roots under pressure in their own area.
During each of the last two seasons, Oakland has been forced to clear danger out of their own zone at a top 25% clip in the USL and has been ineffective in the press at a similar magnitude. A year-over-year decline in set piece defending, likely motivated by the minimal usage of defenders like Gagi Margvelashvili and Camden Riley and the loss of Paul Blanchette’s organizing presence in net, hasn’t helped the cause.
Feilhaber’s final two SKC teams were cut from a different cloth. In Next Pro, he managed to cultivate a successful press and generally keep danger out of his team’s zone. The underlying numbers weren’t fantastic, but the principles were clear.
That same logic applies further upfield. Feilhaber teams tended to be very effective on the break amidst a low-event passing style. SKC had a tendency to push through the middle and use wide combination play as a secondary, complementary tool. Feilhaber consistently got Sporting to the top of the MLS Next Pro ranks in terms of xG as a result of the inside-out opportunism.
If the 40-year-old hopes to repeat the trick in the USL, he’ll need to maximize a roster without a clearly reliable talisman up top. That might not be a problem; last year, SKC II had a whopping 15 different goalscorers, including three forwards that struck nine times or more.
How might Feilhaber re-create that sensibility in the East Bay? His flexibility ought to help. The new Oakland manager’s Next Pro teams weren’t overly dependent on Herculean passing efforts from the back to get the job done. Instead, patient overloading and a tendency to use shorter passes as a bait-and-switch to free up more direct service were the main route to success.
Above, you see two primary permutations of the Feilhaber system as seen across 2024. Up first is a permutation on a 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 shape, with the wingers tucking toward the halfspaces to open up overlaps from out wide.
This setup gave SKC the ability to climb the ladder up and down the midfield with multiple layers of fluidity between the hashes. It’s easy to imagine someone like Panos Armenakas dominating a game from the right-sided role in that shape – it’s actually a very, very similar archetype to the one he filled in Loudoun.
Even when they tried to build that way, Oakland wasn’t regimented enough to get it done. You see it above: rather than compress into a 2-6-2ish look with oodles of central verve, the Roots are spread wildly thin in a 2-4-4 with nothing going between the lines. The idea behind Neveal Hackshaw’s pass is good, but he doesn’t have the support to make things happen.
Whether system or talent has been the problem will matter immensely. Oakland currently ranks as a bottom-five USL side with a mere 56% accuracy on passes into the final third. If Feilhaber’s as good as advertised – and the way in which he set up SKC to constantly generate third-man runs is evidence to the positive – then I’d expect to see that number increase. How the new manager employs gifted passers like Riley as back-end initiators will be revealing.
The other look we may see is a three-at-the-back formation. Last year, Feilhaber used Beto Avila (now with the El Paso Locomotive) as a false No. 9 that often dropped in to anchor the central areas. Even if the central patterns shifted, SKC still wanted to drive through central overloads and rely on that singular overlapper.
It’s a star-making role if you can find adequate players out wide. Sebastian Cruz broke out in Kansas City and earned a move to AV Alta this winter as a result; he scored on Oakland over the weekend! The Roots have the pieces to re-create that effect and then some, and I’d be watching how Morey Doner and Wolfgang Prentice fare under the new regime.
The alternative 3-4-1-2 system is seen here, with Avila called out in dark blue and the two center mids in a lighter shade. Immediately, their fluidity and the overarching central emphasis are hard to miss. Even though Avila is ostensibly a No. 9, he’s allowed to drop in and link play. The two center mids are equally free, constantly refreshing their positions to either promote ball circulation at the back or provide a reachable outlet between opposing lines.
That example of Oakland’s dysfunction we saw above? It couldn’t be further from this instance of Feilhaber-ball, which ends with the false No. 9 backheeling a key pass into a teammate.
How the new manager addresses the defense is an equally important question. By my reckoning, Oakland’s biggest struggle was their acquiescence in the high press in tandem with disorganization at the back. The Roots made it easy to break lines, and they didn’t have a clear enough delineation of responsibility at the back.
Let’s say that I’m a team breaking up Oakland’s left side, driving toward Baboucarr Njie at wingback, Julian Bravo in central defense, and a midfielder like Tyler Gibson that’s dropping in support. The best defenses have assigned roles in which one of those players will close to the ball while the others rotate to cover, or they’re communicating if a different response is required. Time and again, Glinton-era Oakland lacked that poise.
By contrast, Feilhaber’s SKC teams tended to fare better. Even though he was coaching young squads filled with less experienced players, the former MLS star typically did well to drill defensive patterns into his players.
Consider the two frames above that represent the progression of a defensive sequence. Here, Sporting sits in a 5-2-3 block, but they allow Avila to hedge lower between the lines. Meanwhile, the double pivot angles itself in combination with the No. 9 to cordon off one side of the pitch.
This setup limits the viable routes that the opposition can take. The risky choice is to loft a pass over that midfield wall; the safe one is to keep play on the ground and move toward open space on SKC’s left.
Feilhaber’s defense knows what’s coming, and they’ve delegated the responsibility of closing to that second-wave pass to their left wingback – the Baboucarr Njie in the prior thought experiment. That defender guides the opposing receiver inside, where he’ll face down two defensive mids that aren’t giving an inch of leeway. The only choice is to hit a wildly low-percentage pass over the top or meekly reset.
Sporting didn’t always get it right under Benny Feilhaber’s reign. They cratered to 17th percentile xG concession numbers last year, in fact. Even amidst the wobbles, the MLS Next Pro side usually looked organized. That’s a low bar, but it’s one that the Roots have struggled to clear with any regularity.
Presumably, doing a similar job in Oakland will be easier than in Kansas City, where Feilhaber’s average roster age was 21 years old. The youth experience may even allow Oakland’s new coach to integrate more Project 51O talent into the first team; time will tell.
Time, however, is of the essence. Feilhaber’s contract only lasts through the end of this season per the club’s introductory announcement. In the short term, it’s imperative that Oakland hit the ground running. The Roots have just 19 regular season matches to go, and they’re losing their opportunity to give winning soccer to the fans at the Coliseum. It’s a major moment for the Oakland Roots, and Benny Feilhaber might just have the ideas to meet it.