Zungul Is a Party to Socker Championship : Forward Scores Two in Fourth as Blast Beaten

Ron Newman thought he could escape the champagne in the Socker locker room Tuesday night.

While his players were squirting champagne in locker room, Newman quietly talked to the media in another room. But goalkeeper Jim Gorsek found Newman and promptly doused champagne on the head of his coach.

“I knew I should have started Zoltan (Toth) in goal,” Newman joked. “I guess it’s too late now.”

At the time, it was actually early in the night as far as the celebration was concerned. The Sockers and many of the sellout crowd of 12,948 were ready to party well into the morning after the Sockers defeated the Baltimore Blast, 5-3, for their fourth consecutive indoor championship.

As was case in this series, Steve Zungul was San Diego’s hero. His two fourth-quarter goals broke a 3-3 tie as the Sockers captured the Major Indoor Soccer League championship, four games to one.

Late in the third quarter, Zungul had been the goat. His errant pass went directly to Baltimore’s Stan Stamenkovic for the tying goal.

“When Stevie gave the ball away, it would have been so easy for everybody to yell at him,” Newman said. “Instead, everyone patted him on the back and said for him to score a couple for us. That’s exactly what he did.”

Zungul was named the Most Valuable Player in the championship series for the fourth time in the MISL’s seven-year history. He won the award in three of the four years he played for championship teams of the New York Arrows.

But after the third quarter Tuesday, Zungul was looking for a place to hide instead of for the MVP trophy.

“I wrote the script,” Zungul said. “I played for everybody--Baltimore, my team and the fans. You saw that even Steve Zungul can make mistakes. I was down. I just wanted to put the pieces back together.”

Kaz Deyna, a member of all four championship Socker teams, nearly scored the winning goal 20 seconds into the fourth quarter. However, Baltimore goalkeeper Scott Manning made a diving save on Deyna’s header at the goalmouth.

Shortly thereafter, Deyna found the ball at the boards in the right-hand corner. He passed the ball just left of the goal to Zungul, who scored while airborne.

“It was not too easy of a pass,” Deyna said. “The ball was close to the boards, and there were three defenders and the goalkeeper between Stevie and me. It had to be a good pass that nobody could touch. If you get a good pass on that play, there is no difficulty putting it into the net.”

Zungul gave the Sockers a 5-3 lead at 3:24 of the fourth quarter. He scored on a loose ball from 10 feet off a pass from Branko Segota, who had scored San Diego’s first two goals.

Meanwhile, Baltimore achieved a minor goal by not getting embarrassed. Kenny Cooper, Blast coach, was concerned how his team would react after being humiliated in Game 4 at home, 14-2.

“The job we did to regroup and come together as a team was incredible,” Cooper said. “We came back from adversity and put on a helluva show. With some breaks, we could have stolen this game.”

Segota scored the game’s first goal at 11:44 of the first quarter by stealing a Manning pass just inside the red line and connecting from 30 feet. Baltimore tied the game 18 seconds later when Bruce Savage scored from in front off a Stamenkovic pass.

Neither team scored in the second quarter. Zungul came close twice in the first 1:30 of the quarter, only to have Manning make outstanding saves both times. After the second shot, Zungul remained on the ground several seconds and held his head in disbelief.

Segota gave the Sockers a 2-1 lead at 1:44 of the third quarter, taking a breakaway pass from Brian Quinn and scoring left-footed from 20 feet. However, Baltimore tied the game at 4:27 on a textbook play. Manning threw a long pass to Mike Stankovic, who then fed Stamenkovic for a 15-foot shot around Fernando Clavijo.

Manning’s second critical mistake helped the Sockers take a 3-2 lead at 10:03 of the third quarter. He left the net open for an easy goal by Quinn when attempting to kick a loose ball.

But Zungul made his costly mistake 18 seconds later by inadvertently passing to Stamenkovic near the Socker goal.

Zungul did the Sockers a favor in the fourth quarter by preventing them from going to Baltimore for Game 6.

“We didn’t want to go to Baltimore,” Quinn said. “The momentum would have been going against us then. If we had lost tonight, I think we would have lost the series.”