Recap
Green Bay Glory 0 – 4 Minnesota Aurora (F)
Sophie French joined the dynamic duo of Rapp and Hansen in helping Aurora make the most of another trip to Wisconsin. Even more impressive: French was playing out of position as a defender before charging up and bringing her usual attacking brilliance and find the net.
Roa 0 – 3 Rosenborg BK (F)
Anna Josensdal continued to be an iron woman and netted another goal for the Trolls, young Synne Bronsted (only 20) did the same as Rosenborg rolled to victory.
Minnesota United 4 -1 Portland Timbers (M)
This was an absolutely wild match, and one that I got to go see with Alex! You had plenty of attacking football, you had a crazy number of calls by the referee (not all of them were dumb…no matter what the people sitting next to us said), you had a goal directly from the corner kick by Emanuel Reynoso. And that was just the half we watched! In the second half we had more goals, a brief bit of fear, and another goal from Alex’s new favorite Bongokhule Hlongwane (sorry Boxall, I was advocating for you but the kid likes goals)
Minnesota Aurora 7 – 0 Chicago City SC (F)
Aurora wrapped up their second unbeaten regular season with what amounted to a bit of a curtain call as Cat Rapp scored twice (9 for her this year), Maya Hansen once (12 goals for her), and Hannah Adler once (11 for her). Those three accounted for half of the team’s total 60 goals during the regular season.
Aalesund 1 – 0 Rosenborg (M)
Coach Svein Malen’s second game in charge of Rosenborg went a lot like his first. Rosenborg looked okay, competent for sure…and then they gave up a second half goal and sunk deeper down the table.
News & Notes
Weekly Kids Highlights
We completed our two weeks of vacation with a fourth of July celebration that included grandparents, and all the assorted aunties, uncles, and cousins. While I was kind of hoping that Alex would get to challenge goalie Uncle Simon or midfielder Uncle Matt, we settled for seeing the MacKenzie kids deliver a thorough water balloon drubbing to the MacKenzie dads.
Gold Cup-Date
The Gold Cup’s opening round came to an end. Kemar Lawrence started for Jamaica against St. Kitt’s and Nevis. He was strong in distribution but not the best at stopping and spent the second half on the bench. ,Joseph Rosales did an excellent job with his usual two-way play for Honduras in a draw against Qatar and a win over Haiti. But, that wasn’t enough to pull El H into the second round.
The real story that got us fired up though was the tournament saving win for Canada against Cuba. The Maple Leafs could have been knocked out in the first round (a major come down for the team after their first world cup in 3 decades). But that was why they clearly used our favorite players: Dayne St. Clair of Minnesota was in goal, Jayden Nelson of Rosenborg was an attacking substitute in the first half and Viktor Loturi of Ross County came in for the end of the game. (Sidebar one: Okay, yes, one of Cuba’s goals came after Dayne gave up a foul…but c’mon…it’s Bootroom or Bust for the Canucks!)
(Sidebar two: we somehow missed that Matthais Phaeton led the Guadaloupe team throughout the cup including a tie against Canada and a win–with two goals–against Cuba, but a missed penalty cost them a draw that would have pulled them through to the second round)
Transfer Time
Last week I covered most teams, but failed to account for changes coming to Grenoble’s men’s side. While some of the strong willed GF38 back line (Loris Nery and Bart Straalman) reached the end of their contracts, the big change was seeing lead creator Matthais Phaeton depart for CSKA Sofia in Hungary. Aside from Hungary’s abysmal politics, we hope Mathais can step up to the Conference League and draw more attention by playing against Europe’s best.
But Grenoble brought on several strong young players, poaching players who have impressed them the last few seasons with Eddy Sylvestre and Mattheo Xanthippe coming in, the big fresh blood for the team is Belgian Dante Rigo coming in to settle the midfield.
One other team we haven’t discussed much (as they continue preseason before the league stars at the end of the month) is Alebrijes de Oxaca. Their primary change was to say so long to long time coach Jorge Manrique Islas and bring in new coach Carlos Guttierez
Player of the Week
Cat Rapp has been utterly outstanding all season long for Minnesota Aurora and if she wanted to be mad at us for not recognizing her as player of the week sooner we couldn’t blame her. But hopefully she’s understanding.
Standing
Half way through the summer holidays Punjab should be grateful to the guys in Minnesota and Rosenborg, becuase while the women’s teams might well be charging towards the title by now, the mens teams in each club setting are simply surviving. What happens when the Loons join Aurora in bringing the heat? Well…you can see how close it’s gotten.
| Team | W | D | L | PPG | GFA | GAA |
| Punjab–b | 12 | 2 | 3 | 2.24 | 2.29 | 0.94 |
| Minnesota | 20 | 6 | 7 | 2.00 | 2.61 | 1.06 |
| Rosenborg | 17 | 6 | 12 | 1.63 | 1.69 | 0.91 |
| Legon Cities–b | 9 | 7 | 8 | 1.42 | 1.25 | 1.29 |
| Grenoble–b | 15 | 6 | 17 | 1.34 | 1.16 | 1.13 |
| Emelec | 6 | 8 | 7 | 1.24 | 1.24 | 1.19 |
| Freiburg–b | 12 | 7 | 19 | 1.13 | 1.24 | 1.66 |
| Alebrijes–b | 5 | 5 | 8 | 1.11 | 1.33 | 1.39 |
| Ross County–b | 6 | 4 | 12 | 1.00 | 1.23 | 1.50 |
| Vozdovac–b | 4 | 3 | 11 | 0.83 | 0.67 | 1.65 |
| Montana–b | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — |
b–Team is between seasons
What’s Next
Thursday, July 6th
Minnesota Aurora v. Chicago City SC (F–Playoffs)
Friday, July 7th
Saturday, July 8th
Minnesota United v. Austin FC (M)
Sunday, July 9th
Rosenborg v. Lillestrom (M)
USL-W 2nd Round Playoff (Minnesota/Chicago winner versus Flint City/Indy XI winner)
Gold Cup 2nd Round (with Canada’s Bootroom connection, and Kemar Lawrence in action)
Monday, July 10th
Tuesday, July 11th
Wednesday, July 12th
Sporting Cristal v. Emelec (M-Copa)
Houston Dynamo v. Minnesota United (M)
MacKenzie's Boot Room 