Sockers Win on Segota’s Third Goal
Branko Segota usually doesn’t need any assistance in crippling the Comets. His crutch Friday night measured 5-feet 2-inches.
Paul Dougherty, the smallest player in the Major Indoor Soccer League, screened goalkeeper Alan Mayer, allowing Segota’s bad angle shot from the corner to trickle into the net with 1 minute 51 seconds remaining to give the Sockers a 6-5 victory over the Kansas City Comets.
The goal disappointed a crowd of 11,841 hanging on to every play after the Comets rallied from a 5-2 halftime deficit. But no one was more disappointed than Mayer, who faced but one serious scoring threat from the Sockers--the game-winning goal--in the second half.
“I just went for the shot,” Mayer said. “And when Dougherty ran in front of me, I lost it. I couldn’t pick it up. I didn’t know whether he was going to dummy it (let it go) or back heel it. He was wide open standing one yard in front of me.”
“I looked for Dougherty, but he was too short, so I aimed for the back post,” Segota said, smiling. “It was a pass, of course. It was a sharp angle, so I cut it a little bit more. He (Dougherty) could have back heeled it through, but he decided to let it go, and he fooled Mayer.”
Segota’s goal was his third of the game and 13th against the Comets in the last five meetings between the teams. It was also his 43rd goal of the season, tying him with Minnesota’s Hector Marinaro for the league lead.
Dougherty made his mark earlier by scoring the second goal of the game and setting up Segota’s second goal just before halftime.
“You trust Branko to hit the target,” said Dougherty, a second-year midfielder from Leamington Spa, England. “We came out knowing Kansas City. We heard about their comeback from four goals the last time. That might have been on our minds. Their heads never went down.”
Second-half goals by Damir Haramina, Barry Wallace and Gino Schiraldi in a 7 1/2-minute span tied it with 11:44 left in the game. In that span, they outshot the Sockers, 13-3.
The Sockers didn’t have to work all that hard in the second half. They did enough damage to sit back for a while. Fernando Clavijo’s shorthanded goal in the second quarter made it 4-2 and took the punch out of the Comets for the moment. Clavijo’s 11th career shorthanded goal is one short of tying the league record. Four of those have come against the Comets.
The pseudo comeback started with Haramina’s 25th goal 10:20 into the third quarter. After killing a penalty at the beginning of the fourth quarter, Betancourt set up Wallace for a goal at 52 seconds. Schiraldi, who has played in only one of the six previous games, eased his way back into the lineup with the tying goal at 3:16. That sent the crowd into a frenzy.
“I tried to come in and get the team going a little bit,” Schiraldi said. “I tried to give the team a little bit of spunk . . . and we give up that silly goal at the end. It’s good that we came back, but we can’t keep doing this every game.”
The Sockers gathered themselves with 3:05 left in what looked like a game-winning drive in football. Defender Kevin Crow and goalkeeper Zoltan Toth tapped the ball back to each other for 50 seconds trying to extend the Comets’ coverage. David Doyle and Betancourt committed slightly, allowing an entry pass into the Comets zone with 2:07 left. Sixteen seconds later, the Sockers’ strategy had worked.
The Sockers (30-9) continued to roll with their seventh straight victory and 16th road victory of the season. Their Western Division title is all but assured now with a 10-game lead with 17 games to play.
