He’ll Worry About That Later : Before Deciding Future, Wright Has a Big Game

Paul Wright is a think-about-it-tomorrow person.

So when he plays tonight for the San Diego Nomads against the San Francisco Blackhawks in the Western Soccer League championship game, he won’t worry about his future.

Maybe he’ll worry Sunday, or the next day. Or maybe he’ll just wait until next week. Who knows?

Wright completed his rookie season with the Sockers in June. The only thing he really knows for sure is that he has no idea what he’s going to do after tonight.

It has been nearly two months since Wright, a 20-year-old forward who flies through the Major Indoor Soccer League in blurring fashion, was wrenched from the Sockers in a free agent draft by the Cleveland Crunch, an expansion team willing to bet its chips on raw talent.

The Sockers were shocked. Ron Cady, the team president, admitted as much, wondering why a team would take a chance on a San Diego-area player with such limited experience. But Cady expressed no regrets. Each team is allowed to protect only eight players. What’s a seven-time indoor championship team to do with a roster full of Segotas, Quinns and Crows?

So Cady simply said: “We’ve got more than eight good players. You can’t protect them all.”

All this leaves Wright packing sweaters, heavy jackets and other cold-weather gear for Cleveland, right? Uh, wait a minute.

Ask him about it, and he’ll smile and shift around in his seat. He’s enjoying his summer and doesn’t want to think about decisions.

“I don’t like to worry about things,” he says. “I just take things as they come. I’m just going to do what I want to do, and who knows what that is? I could maybe be in Europe in two weeks trying out for a team.”

Perhaps the biggest question in all of this is whether the Sockers made a mistake leaving Wright unprotected. He played 30 games last season and was rarely a major contributor, scoring eights goals and three assists. But when he flew by everybody on a breakaway, few could ignore his potential.

Put simply, Wright thinks the Sockers blew it. Sonia Wright, Paul’s mother, goes to Nomad games and hears people say: “I can’t believe the Sockers let him go.”

He says, “It was rather silly. It was really not a very smart move, I’ll just put it like that. It wasn’t a very smart move on their part.

“They don’t think I was that valuable. I guess I’m just going to have to show them.

“I know I have promise, and I know I can learn this game. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Paul Wright spent the first 10 years of his life in Queenspark, a suburb of London. He attended a strict Christian school, wore a tie every day, studied religion and was taken across the street with his classmates once a week for church.

Students adhered to a strict schedule. Playing hookie was not a problem simply because kids knew they couldn’t get away with it in such a small community.

“If you were not going to school,” Sonia said, “the butcher in the butcher shop would know you and tell your mother.”

Leisure time was spent kicking a soccer ball. Paul said he started playing as soon as he could walk. Every kid wanted to grow up and become a professional player.

At age 10, Wright moved to Modesto to join Sonia, who had moved two years earlier. Sonia says she thinks Paul found life in California exciting. He came home from his first Halloween and said, “Mom, this is just great. All you have to do is knock on the door, and they give you all this stuff.”

He tried baseball for a year and played quite well but decided to stick with soccer, which remained his favorite thing to do. And he was probably the best player around. After moving to San Diego for his junior year in high school, he made the All-CIF team two years in a row for Grossmont High School. His English background helped.

“I’ve been watching (soccer) since I was three,” he said. “I know how it’s supposed to be played. I don’t think a lot of these kids here really did know how it was supposed to be played.”

Everybody has an opinion about what Wright should do now. People are pouring information about Cleveland into him, even those who have never been there.

“The first thing people tell me is it’s cold,” he says. “I’ve heard that a thousand and one times. Pretty much everybody I come in contact with has something to say about Cleveland.”

Some of what he hears is good. Some isn’t. Cleveland Coach Kai Haaskivi, who played for the Baltimore Blast last season and is the third-leading scorer in MISL history, has spoken with Wright several times on the phone since the draft.

The first thing Haaskivi asked Wright is if he ever hears anything good about Cleveland.

Wright says: “It’s about 50-50.”

So Haaskivi told him: “Even though you might not have heard too many nice things about Cleveland, in soccer circles we’ve got a good thing going.”

But will Wright go?

Haaskivi is betting he will.

“We checked him out,” Haaskivi said. “We felt that had it been a year ago, we probably would not have taken him. We felt he has matured a lot in the last year. We felt that he wouldn’t have a problem buying some winter clothes.”

But remember this a young man who, during the course of a short conversation, will say any number of things that lead you to believe that he has no idea what he’s going to be doing next year or even, really, next Tuesday.

He might say: “I just want to go to Cleveland and do the best I can.”

Right afterward he will say: “I haven’t signed anything yet.”

He has dreams, so he says: “I’m not ready to settle down just yet. I still want to go to Europe and play. I want to do that before I get too old.”

But then there are the times he thinks: “I wish I could go back and play college soccer.”

And then when you ask why he didn’t do that in the first place, he says: “I made that decision at the last minute again.”

Somewhere between England, Modesto and San Diego, this guy picked up on the California laid-back life style and decided he liked it. Maybe that’s what makes his decision so difficult.

From a soccer standpoint, Cleveland is probably a prime opportunity. The surface on which the Crunch plays is the biggest in the league, which would allow Wright more room to maneuver and use his blinding speed. Also, the Crunch is made up primarily of young players who, like Wright, are unestablished. He would probably start and, almost certainly, would see more action than he did with the Sockers.

Whether all this is more important to Wright than staying in San Diego with his friends and family remains to be seen. But for players in the MISL, the possibility of having to relocate is never far around the corner.

“I suppose that’s the life of a soccer player,” said Paul Dougherty, Wright’s closest friend on the Sockers. “If he wants to be a soccer player, he knows he has got to accept that. That’s all part of the game.”

If nothing else, Wright has an MISL championship ring to show off. He contributed an assist on Waad Hirmez’s winning goal in the championship game. Life since has not been half bad.

“I’ve already won a championship with the Sockers,” he says. “Why not move on to something else?”

Whatever that may be, he’ll probably think about tomorrow.