Sockers Start the Season in Typical Style

It should not surprise anyone that the Sockers returned to San Diego for the home opener Friday night with a rather modest 1-3 record for the youthful 1990-91 season.

This has never been a November team. Indeed, the Sockers generally come out of the off-season and into hibernation. They doze through December, January, February, March and finally stir like giant bears in April. This is definitely not a team for all seasons.

During the 1989-90 regular season, if you will recall, the local heroes plodded along with a 25-27 record. They managed to finish second in the Major Indoor Soccer League’s Western Division mainly because everyone else in the West went south.

But you know what happened. They went 11-5 in the postseason and defeated the Baltimore Blast, four games to two, in the finals to win their eighth indoor championship in nine years.

So here we are again. Deja vu, to you.

Yes, it all sounds so familiar. All of the MSL thinks this might be the year that the Sockers are vulnerable. After all, they lost goalkeeper Zoltan Toth and defenders George Fernandez and Ralph Black, soccer’s equivalent to losing a star pitcher and the double-play combination off a championship baseball team.

Given that the Sockers figure to be weaker defensively, the MSL has legislated more offense into the game. The goals are two feet wider and one foot higher, or 34.6% more inviting. Defensive players have to stay 15 feet away from free kicks, rather than 10. Four fouls (or multiples thereof) on one player in a half will produce two-minute penalties and power plays.

This legislation toward offense, however, may be about like trying to stop the San Francisco 49ers by shortening the field so everyone can score. The bottom line remains intact, being that the team scoring the most wins the game.

As Socker veteran Kevin Crow said: “The rules changes won’t change who wins the championship.”

That right, Kevin? That being the case, the Sockers will win. Right? If it doesn’t change, it has to be San Diego because it’s always San Diego.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

Of course not. The best team, with the possible exception of the 1990 World Series, should win regardless of gerrymandering of the rules.

This begs the question. . . .

Can the Sockers be the best team by the time their time of year rolls around next spring? They are not now. Far from it. One game or one week or even one month will not answer this question.

Clearly, these are different Sockers.

“What we lack in experience,” said Crow, “we have to make up for with a high energy level and good attitude.”

Crow is a veteran of six championship seasons, as is player-coach Brian Quinn. Some of those teams won either in spite of internal bickering or because of internal bickering. Fighting each other seemed to give them an edge, since they felt they had to fight the other guys harder.

There seems to be no such conflict among these guys.

Youth, indeed, is the keynote here. Some of it manifested itself during the playoffs last spring when youngsters Wes Wade and Paul Wright provided a spark called speed, something the Sockers never had in great abundance. There are more young guys this year, but no one can know for sure if they will develop as Wade and Wright developed a year ago.

“We have more young guys in their first or second years assuming regular roles on the team than we’ve ever had,” said Crow. “But I don’t think it will hurt us. These guys are learning quickly.”

The Sockers’ attitude toward youth, in fact, seems to have taken a rather drastic turn. Veterans used to tolerate, at best, and abuse, at worst, the younger players. A kid breaking in with the “old” Sockers was in for a six-month hazing.

“Well,” said Crow, “we’ve had a changing of the guard over the years. I don’t think it wasn’t that the older guys didn’t accept the kids. It’s just that we don’t give them such a hard time. Maybe it’s upbringing. They were harder on kids because they were given a harder time.”

Those were the days of Juli Veee, Gert Wieczorkowski, Volkmar Gross, Jean Willrich, Martin Donnelly, Kaz Deyna and the others who started all this almost a decade ago.

Maybe attitudes have changed because these Sockers have to depend on youth. There is a solid nucleus of veterans, but that nucleus won’t be enough to get it all done again.

“We have the potential to win it again,” Crow said, “but we have to get more out of everybody than we ever have before.”

Yes, the Sockers do have the potential, but you just never know for sure this early in the season. Trying to evaluate the Sockers in November is like naming a song after one note.