Force Is With Sockers, Not Cleveland . . . and That’s All, Folks

That’s it? It’s over? Come on, I haven’t finished my popcorn. The butter hasn’t even melted.

As theater went, the Major Indoor Soccer League’s championship series was over before the second act. It was like a concert that ended at the intermission. It was like a whodunit that told you who did it in the first chapter.

You thought the Zips were in Akron? They have moved.

As in, Sockers 4, Cleveland Zip.

Over and out.

Formerly and formally known as the Force, Cleveland waited 2 1/2 weeks to be wiped out with four consecutive losses in seven days. No team had ever suffered so swift a demise in an MISL championship series.

For all intents and purposes, the end came Sunday night on that magnificent succession of passes from Jacques Ladouceur to Brian Quinn to Fernando Clavijo to Zoran Karic for the winning goal in the first minute and 28 seconds of an overtime period.

That gave the Sockers a 3-2 victory and a 3-0 lead in games, and Cleveland was figuratively, if not literally, done.

At a luncheon Monday, Force president Bert L. Wolstein was already congratulating the Sockers and predicting that the Force would, in fact, be a force in the years to come. The coach, Timo Liekoski, was bravely noting that three wins are not enough in a best-of-seven series, forgetting or ignoring the fact that zip wins is insufficient to win a series of any duration.

At their doorsteps Tuesday morning, Cleveland players found a newspaper headline that could hardly be described as encouraging: “School’s about out for Force.”

And so, as the Force players arrived at the Richfield Coliseum Tuesday night, their fates already seemed to be sealed. In a few hours, it would be mercifully over.

Not that there was anything merciful about this series for Cleveland. It may have been the most competitive sweep in the history of postseason brooms.

“When you look at history books,” Socker Kevin Crow said, “they’ll say that San Diego swept Cleveland, four-zip. They’ll forget that two of them went into overtime, and tonight’s could have. The difference between winning and losing is very small, and we were able to raise our game the extra notch we needed to win.”

That extra notch Tuesday night came when the series most valuable player, Hugo Perez, took a splendid pass from Juli Veee with 3:07 to play and put away both the game and the series. That made it 5-4, and the rest was garbage.

In the aftermath, it might have been tempting to say the real championship series was the Western Division final against Kansas City. That one had surges of emotion and momentum, drama and trauma, frenzy and frustration.

Look at that Kansas City series . . .

A 5-4 Kansas City win, a 5-4 San Diego win and then a 7-6 Kansas City win in overtime. Along came another Kansas City win, a 7-3 drubbing, and the Comets were up three games to one with Game 5 coming up in their arena. However, the Sockers won, 7-1, to frustrate a crowd of 14,054 and get the ball and series back into their court. After back-to-back wins before crowds of 10,121 and 12,884, the Sockers had completed an improbable rally from the brink of elimination.

The perception going into the championship series may have been that the Beast from the East was more Garfield than Goliath. The Sockers were 17-3 against the East during the regular season, and Cleveland was 10-14 against the West. In fact, only one Eastern team, Dallas, was above .500 against the West. And for what it’s worth, consider that the West was a 9-3 winner in the All-Star Game.

No one seemed to notice, but this series had the makings of the mismatch it ultimately looked like.

Of course, the Sockers were not exactly going into the championship series with their offensive arsenal intact. Branko Segota, easily their most potent weapon, was out with a shoulder separation suffered in the opening minute of Game 7 against Kansas City. What was ominous was that the Sockers scored eight goals in that game without him.

However, this club has historically been at its best when confronted with adversity of some nature.

“If nothing’s wrong,” Crow said, “we’ll come up with something.”

Adversity came in a slightly different form this year. The franchise has gone through the playoffs while in the midst of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The players’ sympathies here may have been limited by the fact that they went through a losing battle with the league itself over a reduced salary cap and, thus, reduced future salaries.

The players would like to have won the series in San Diego, and a couple of good home crowds would have been healthy for the club’s checkbook.

But this was not a series to be dragged onward. The players, stuck in a hotel literally in the middle of nowhere, were wearying of playing ping-pong and pool and kicking a ball around a nearby field. What’s more, the in-room movies were beginning to repeat themselves.

A feeling of ennui was setting in, and the only cure was a sweep and an early trip home.

Since it was over, why not just go ahead and finish it?

Uncharacteristically, at least on the road, the Sockers came out attacking, rather than counterpunching.

“We did that purposely,” Quinn said. “We didn’t want to spend an extra two days in Cleveland. We figured we’d just go for it.”

Waad Hirmez, he of the hat trick and the obligatory champagne shampoo, agreed.

“It was a long season,” he said, “and we didn’t want to make it any longer. We wanted to finish it off. We didn’t want to take any chances.”

No chances were taken, though the Force managed to make it just a little bit scary. They went for it and got the job done.

Quickly.