Ego Punctured, U.S. Beats Yugoslav Club : Soccer: Exhibition victory, 1-0, follows Gansler’s admonition not to let recent success go to the players’ heads.

The U.S. soccer team was beginning to feel so good about itself that some players might have thought they could cross the Atlantic this week for a pre-World Cup training camp in Switzerland without a plane.

Sensing that players’ attitudes bordered on overconfidence, Coach Bob Gansler gave them a reality check with some pointed pregame comments Sunday that paid off in a 1-0 victory over a good Yugoslav club team, Partizan Belgrade, before a crowd of 30,644 non-Partizan fans at the Yale Bowl.

“We might have been a little lax,” he said in describing his team’s workouts during training camp near here last week. “I want us to be intense, but we also have to be intelligent.

“We can’t go out there and roll the dice. If we’re going against teams like the Yugoslavians and trying to trade trick for trick, bicycle kick for bicycle kick, we’re going to lose.”

Asked how a team that at least one London bookmaker said will enter the World Cup as a 1,500-1 shot to win it all could have delusions of grandeur, Gansler said it is a result of the United States’ recent successes in exhibition games. In five games since April 8 before Sunday, the team had a 3-1-1 record.

“You do things and you get a little satisfied,” Gansler said. “That’s human nature. Sometimes you have to remind people to be a little less human.”

If the United States did not look super-human at the start, then it at least looked Italian or Brazilian. That did not pay off in an early goal, but it at least set the tone for the game with the United States as the aggressor. In the first half, the Yugoslavs were out-shot, 10-4.

The goal came 15 seconds into the second half, when midfielder Tab Ramos faked a shot from about 25 yards to draw a defender, then dropped off a pass behind the surprised Yugoslav to forward Peter Vermes.

He scored on a right-footed shot into the far right corner from 16 yards, just eluding goalie Goran Pandurovic. It was the second goal in three games for Vermes, who has been a significant addition to the U.S. attack since arriving earlier this month from the Dutch first division.

For the remainder of the game, the United States played conservatively, trying to avoid mistakes that would lead to an easy equalizer. That is not as easy as it sounds.

In two of the previous three games, U.S. defenders made at least one foolish error that led to a goal. They made one of those potentially disastrous plays Sunday in the first half.

Defender Steve Trittschuh, who seems to have a knack for that sort of thing, tried to pass back to goalkeeper Tony Meola. It was so slow that Yugoslavia’s Sladan Scepovic reached it first, but he mishit his shot wide of an open net.

“If we make a play like that in the World Cup, it’s an automatic goal for the other team,” Vermes said. “We’ve got to stop doing that.”

With Trittschuh on the bench, there were no such errors in the second half. But Meola still had to earn his salary. Of seven Yugoslav shots in the final 45 minutes, five of them were true enough that he had to make saves.

After scoring, the United States attempted only four more shots. It has a 7-6-1 record in exhibitions this year and has not been beaten in four games.

There are two more exhibitions, May 30 against Liechtenstein at Eschen, Liechtenstein; and June 2 against Switzerland at St. Gallen, Switzerland, before the June 10 World Cup opener against Czechoslovakia at Florence, Italy.

The Partizan team, which finished fourth in Yugoslavia’s first division this year, was without its three best players, who are training for the World Cup with the national team.

But the U.S. players still considered the victory significant in their own development.

“I’m still not sure whether to believe it myself, but we seem to be getting better and better,” forward Bruce Murray said. “Six months ago, I don’t think we could have beaten this team.”

Vermes said the team turned around after an embarrassing 2-0 loss against Hungary at Budapest in March. One week later, playing at East Berlin, the team was considerably more aggressive in a 3-2 loss to East Germany.

“One thing the Europeans like about American athletes is that we don’t give up,” said Vermes, who had played in both the Hungarian and Dutch first divisions. “We had a decision to make after the Hungary game, whether to give up or try to get better.

“We feel we can play pretty good soccer now. I’m not saying we can win the World Cup. Of course not. But we can play with some of the best teams in the world.”