Lazers, Playing Without Injured Stars, Lose to Baltimore

The Lazers’ Major Indoor Soccer League record dropped to 3-3 Saturday night when they were beaten, 5-3, by the Baltimore Blast before a sellout crowd of 12,506 at Baltimore.

Playing without injured Brazilian stars Beto (knee) and Zizinho (ankle), the Lazers fell behind, 2-0, on first-quarter goals by Keith Furphy and Andy Chapman. They fought back to tie the score in the second quarter when Stuart Lee and Gus Mokalis beat Blast goalie Jay McCutcheon, filling in for regular starter Keith Van Eron who has the flu.

Baltimore (7-0) again took a two-goal lead in the third period when Ernie Buriano and rookie Michael Brady scored, before the Lazers’ Neil Gibson cut the margin to 4-3.

The Blast sealed the victory 13 seconds from the final whistle when Richard Chinapoo scored his seventh goal in as many games.

“When you’re down (players) like that, you need to be lucky,” Lazer Coach Peter Wall said. “We made a great effort. We had great goalkeeping (from David Brcic) but we didn’t have the offense to stay in the game. We came in shorthanded and we knew we had to play very hard.”

The Lazers next game is Friday at Dallas against the Sidekicks.