Teammate’s Bad Break Opens Door to U. S. Team : Heat Forward Jeff Hooker Gets His Chance to Play, Comes Up With Mixed Feelings

After a three-year absence from the U.S. national soccer team, Jeff Hooker knew he would need a break, any kind of break, to play in a World Cup qualifying match this year.

He got it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a painful break for Billy Thompson, Hooker’s running mate in the front line of the Torrance-based Los Angeles Heat.

On July 2, Thompson suffered a clean fracture of his right tibia while taking a shot in a game between the Heat and the San Francisco Bay Blackhawks. It was a freak injury. Thompson was alone on the San Francisco wing ready to shoot, but his shin bowed when he planted, and he was lost to the Heat--and the national team--for at least six weeks.

Thompson had been slated to be one of the forwards on the U.S. team for its World Cup qualifying match against El Salvador the following week.

Instead, it was Hooker, then the hottest player in the Western Soccer League, who got the call from national team officials.

Unfortunately for Hooker, the El Salvador game was indefinitely postponed when soccer’s international hierarchy, the Federation Internationale de Football, couldn’t agree on a stadium for the match.

So Hooker replaced Thompson in New Britain, Conn., last week on the American B team for a Marlboro Cup tournament. But he didn’t get the chance he wanted to show his coaches what he could do.

He twisted his ankle in training, then played only 30 minutes of both games--the first a 1-0 victory over a team from Northern Ireland and the second a 3-0 shelling at the hands of the championship team from the Polish professional league.

In the first game, the U.S. team circled into a defensive shell by the time Hooker checked in at forward. And in the second game, the Americans were worn down when Hooker entered, and the hopes for a comeback against Poland--and of Hooker getting any shots on goal--were slim.

“It was the chance I was waiting for,” said Hooker, 24. “But I ended up with mixed feelings. I guess it worked out well for the team, but individually not so well.”

So Hooker is waiting for another break.

Five years ago, when Hooker was 19, he was a rising star and a well-known face on the national team. He had been one of the most highly touted prep players in the nation at Walnut High School and was a dazzling forward as a freshman at UCLA.

Hooker wore the U.S. colors in the 1984 Olympic Games and again in 1985 when the Americans failed to qualify for the World Cup under national team Coach Alkis Panagoulias. In 1984 Hooker was one of only four American amateurs on the Olympic soccer squad--the rest were drawn from the erstwhile professional North American Soccer League.

He played in front of 78,000 cheering fans at Stanford University when the U.S. routed Costa Rica, 3-0, in its first Olympic preliminary round match. But for Hooker and the rest of the American team, the Olympics ended in disappointment.

In the second preliminary match, Pietro Fanna’s second-half goal led Italy to a 1-0 victory over the U.S. at the Rose Bowl. In the third game, the Americans dueled Egypt to a 1-1 tie--but the Egyptians sat on the ball for much of the second half and moved into the quarterfinals ahead of the U.S. by scoring more goals in the round.

For Hooker, more disappointment followed. After 1985, Panagoulias was gone, replaced by Lothar Osiander, who brought a host of new faces with him. Hooker admits he let himself down--and his chance of sticking with the U.S. team--through a clash of personalities with Osiander.

“I’d been with the national team so long, I guess I took things for granted,” he said. “I wasn’t playing at the top of my game. But I also had a bad attitude. After a while, it didn’t matter how well or how badly I played, I wasn’t going to play for Lothar.”

Hooker’s discipline slipped, and with it his standing with Osiander. He was snubbed time and again when invitations went around for national team berths.

But this spring, Hooker decided to let his play speak for itself. With Bob Gansler, a new coach, in charge of the national team’s quest for a spot in Italy for the 1990 World Cup, Hooker figured he might open some eyes again.

“I tried to play this season (with the Heat) with the idea of getting hot and getting back on the national team,” Hooker said. “Scoring a lot of goals is the most obvious way to get noticed.”

He did just that. In the Heat’s offensive scheme, Hooker is the target man up front, with his back to the goal, taking balls at his feet and playing them out to other attackers, or spinning into the box himself. He’s responded with seven goals and five assists, and he leads the team in scoring with 19 points.

“I’m not the flashiest player on the team,” he said. “I’m not the type of player who’s going to step over the ball three times and put it into the back of the net and make the crowd go crazy. And I’m not all speed and skill like Billy Thompson.”

But Hooker is a solid piece of the Heat’s winning puzzle. He has scored a pair of goals in a game twice this season--once in 102-degree weather at Tempe, Ariz., against the Arizona Condors when he was battling the flu.

The second time Hooker turned the trick was against Real Santa Barbara, and with his first goal of that game--a breakaway through Santa Barbara’s defense in the 28th second--he scored the fastest goal in league history.

“He’s the key to our offense,” said Heat Coach Bobby Sibbald. “He’s what makes things run for us. Even though he’s not very big, he’s very tough to take the ball away from.”

Hooker is looking for another invitation to the national team--there is another Marlboro Cup scheduled for Los Angeles in August and Hooker hopes his name will be on the roster.

“The ideal situation would be to play well through the WSL playoffs, get an invitation and then play well and carry it over from there,” he said.