Veee’s Reappearance Provides Sockers With a Little Playoff Magic

For a guy who is 38 and may be finishing his final Major Indoor Soccer League season, Juli Veee still has some pretty good moves left.

Tuesday morning, after the Sockers finished a short workout in Mission Valley, Veee slipped away from a couple of reporters by running the length of the field, lifting the net in one of the goals and sliding underneath it and out into the parking lot.

His blue van was parked right behind the goal, and Veee was in it quickly and gone.

As Coach Ron Newman said, “Juli still has more magic than most of the players in this league.”

During the first four games of the Western Division final series between the Sockers and the Kansas City Comets, though, Veee’s best act was the same one he pulled Tuesday morning--disappearing.

The player who has more career playoff points than any Socker except Branko Segota managed just four--and no goals after Game 2--while the Sockers fell behind, 3 games to 1. Once again, their fans were conjuring up thoughts of last season, when, for the first time since 1981, San Diego was not part of an indoor championship series.

It didn’t help matters that in Game 3, the Sockers blew a 6-2 lead in the fourth quarter and lost, 7-6, in overtime. Or that in Game 4, Kansas City scored four unanswered fourth-quarter goals to win, 7-3. The Sockers were looking fatigued, and Veee, their oldest player, was looking a step slower than that.

“You’ve got to understand that at his age, Juli can’t always do it 100%,” Segota said. “But he’s still a force. The other team can’t just leave him alone or he will hurt them. He can still hurt them when they don’t leave him alone, too.”

Saturday night, with his team facing elimination in Game 5, Veee summoned a little extra energy and hurt the Comets. He matched his point total of the first four games with two goals and two assists as the Sockers won, 7-1, and brought the series back to San Diego for Game 6 tonight at 7:35. Game 7, if necessary, would be played Saturday at the Sports Arena.

Kansas City still leads the best-of-seven series, 3-2, but now the Sockers are rekindling memories of 1986, when they trailed Minnesota, 3-1, in the championship round and rallied to win their fifth consecutive indoor title.

Veee, who has never been out of breath when it comes to expressing an opinion, says it will take more than just a strong effort to dispose of Kansas City. In fact, he says, it may take a little magic.

“You need a magic mixture to win a championship,” said Veee, who has been on four of the Sockers’ title teams in the 1980s. “On our championship teams, we had guys who would fight and bitch and scratch off the field, but when it came to going on the field, those same guys would die for you.

“This team, this year, has become too many individuals. When were ahead of Kansas City, 6-2 (in Game 3), everybody was trying to get that one more goal for their statistics. We stopped thinking about stopping them, and they came back. These guys have got to realize that if we don’t win this thing, nobody’s going to remember any of their statistics.”

Certainly, it has already been proven in this series that the Sockers can’t afford any more letdowns. Although in the past they sometimes could win playoff series by cruising, that is no longer the case.

“If we can play with the same intensity we played with for 60 minutes in Game 5 in these next two games, there’s no reason we can’t win this thing,” Newman said.

And it is important that players such as Veee show leadership.

“When you see a player like Juli giving his all and really working hard,” forward Hugo Perez said, “it’s going to help the rest of the players.”

Socker Notes

Coach Ron Newman said he will not decide on a starting goalkeeper for tonight’s sixth game (XTRA AM 690, XEXX AM 1420) until this morning. It is Jim Gorsek’s turn in the regular rotation, but Newman may start Zoltan Toth, who made 17 saves in the Sockers’ Game 5 victory Saturday. . . . Kansas City definitely will change goalkeepers tonight: Ed Gettemeier will start in place of Alan Mayer. Gettemeier was injured in the second quarter of the Comets’ Game 3 victory over Los Angeles in the first round of the playoffs and hasn’t played since. He is 2-0 in the playoffs but was 0-2 with a 6.38 goals-against average against the Sockers during the regular season.