Sockers Lose Home Playoff Game; a First
Vancouver, Edmonton and Tampa Bay never did it.
Neither did Kansas City, Wichita, Baltimore or Golden Bay. Ditto for St. Louis, Tacoma, the New York Cosmos and last year’s Minnesota team.
But this year’s Minnesota sure did it.
Sunday night at the San Diego Sports Arena, the Strikers handed the Sockers their first playoff defeat at home.
San Diego is 26-1 in home playoff games.
The score: Strikers 6, Sockers 1.
“We’ve burst their bubble and taken away a dynasty of home wins,” said Striker Coach Alan Merrick.
With the victory, Minnesota tied the best-of-seven Major Indoor Soccer League championship series at one game apiece.
The victory gives Minnesota the home field advantage in the series. Three of the remaining five games will be played at the Met Center, including Games 3 and 4 Friday and Sunday nights.
The game Sunday was quite a reversal from Friday night when the Sockers crushed the Strikers, 7-2.
“We embarrassed ourselves that game,” Merrick said. “We were hurt by what happened. A lot of pride has been restored.”
The Strikers didn’t just win Sunday. A crowd of only 9,132 fans saw Minnesota hand San Diego its worst playoff defeat ever and its most one-sided defeat of the season.
Minnesota owned the scoreboard and the Sockers camped out in the penalty box.
The Strikers, who handed the Sockers two of their three defeats at home during the regular season and were 3-0 against San Diego, led 2-0 after one quarter, 3-0 at halftime and 6-1 after three quarters.
“It was a terrible mess,” said Socker Coach Ron Newman. “We made a couple of mental errors to begin with. We were hanging our heads at times and weren’t tenacious.
“Things got worse and worse and we got ourselves in a bigger and bigger hole. The only people who had a worse night than us were the referees.”
San Diego was penalized seven times--including two bench penalties--and the Strikers were not penalized.
The Strikers scored on a power play and on a shootout goal by Thompson Usiyan to make it 2-0.
Usiyan’s shot past goalkeeper Zoltan Toth barely beat the five-second limit. Jan Goossens scored on a penalty kick to make it 6-1 late in the third quarter.
Newman and his players weren’t pleased with the officiating, but they did not blame the loss on senior referee Gino Dippolito and referee Bill Maxwell.
“I didn’t like it (officiating),” Newman said, “but I don’t think the officials caused the result of the game. We were playing bad enough to get beat.”
Some explanations for the defeat:
- The Sockers entered the game without midfielder Branko Segota, who was sidelined for the second straight game with a left calf strain.
It went from bad to worse for San Diego when midfielder Hugo Perez left the game midway through the first quarter with a scratch on his right eyeball.
Perez was taken to Cabrillo Hospital, where he was diagnosed as having a scratched cornea and lacerations above the eye. He is expected to be able to practice Wednesday.
With Perez on the sidelines, the Sockers were forced to play without their top two scorers in the regular season. It’s tough to replace a total of 101 goals and 71 assists.
It got so bad that veteran Kaz Deyna, taking regular shifts for the first time in two months, scored the lone Socker goal on a right-footer midway through the third quarter to make it 5-1.
“Losing Hugo disrupted our offense,” Newman said, “but we’ve lost players before and managed to rally.”
Not Sunday night.
- Striker goalkeeper Tino Lettieri was on top of his game (11 saves on 28 shots and an assist) and Toth (8 saves on 22 shots and six goals allowed) has had better nights.
- “We were flat,” said Socker defender Fernando Clavijo. “They did everything better than us.”
