Austrian Creates Game Combining Soccer and Tennis

And now for the latest spesoc scores: Austria 3, the United States 2.

Spesoc? Of course.

It’s a combination of soccer and tennis created by a former Austrian soccer league player to get round the lack of players at the school where he once coached.

“Spesoc or Special Soccer is a game for the world,” Wolfgang Anderl said in an interview. “You need only two things: goalie ability and a good leg to score.”

“People like to watch direct duels between players like in tennis. And I’m sure that many, including prominent athletes, like to play soccer in singles or doubles.”

Dreaming of the future, Anderl has already designed a 20,000-seat arena, devised a full set of rules and even laid the groundwork for a WSA -- World Spesoc Association -- governing body.

Such grandiose plans seemed far removed from the chilly field where Austria recently downed a U.S. team in a Saturday afternoon game watched by just a few dozen spectators.

As in conventional soccer, the object was to score goals with kicks. Only the goalie could handle the ball.

But each team had only two or three players. The 100-foot by 100-foot field was divided into two halves, each containing zones for defense, attack and free play.

In the attack zone, players could touch the ball only twice before taking a shot on goal. Only in the free zone could the ball be kicked around and dribbled as in conventional soccer.

Like tennis, spesoc has no time limit. Games are over the best of five sets, each set lasting until one team scores six goals. Where games are tied at two sets all, teams have the option of playing a penalty shootout or a fifth set.

“It’s an interesting game, particularly in a city where there is the problem of space. You can play it anywhere,” enthused David Hagan, a sports professor at the American School in Vienna.

Hagan, who used to play with English third division club Aldershot, coached the U.S team which battled Anderl’s Austrians.

“The problem is to create a grassroots basis and find people to play it,” admitted the coach, whose American squad consisted of a Yugoslav, a Turk, an Austrian, a Dane and a Japanese.

“Spesoc is more goal oriented and it has more action than classical soccer but, on the minus side, it takes dribbling and technical combinations out of the game. It’s all shoot,” Hagan said.

The Americans won the first two sets 6-4, 6-4. But then Anderl brought another twist of Spesoc into play.

He resorted to a “risk play,” pitting just one Austrian against two opponents. In that situations, the lone player scores two sets by winning only one.

Peter Sir, 17, booted in six goals for Austria against just one for the visitors to tie the scores at 2-sets all. Austria then proved superior in the decisive penalty shootout.

Enthusiastic cheers from the small pro-Austria crowd were scarcely matched on the field, however.

“As a variation it’s good. But we like more the big soccer,” said Makoto Niiyama from Kagoshima, Japan, the U.S. goalie.

Undaunted, Anderl still hopes to export the game to the United States, home to 1994 World Cup soccer tournament.

“In Vienna there is less and less interest for soccer in general,” he lamented. “In America the atmosphere is better.”