ANALYSIS : Midway Through Season, Sockers Answer Their Cynics

The Sockers completed their 26th game of a 52-game schedule with a loss Tuesday to Tacoma. No big deal. They had won six in a row going in and 12 of 15.

So, at the midpoint of the Major Soccer League season, there is little fodder for all the cynics who surfaced when the defending champions started this season 1-5.

The Sockers are now 15-11 and one-half game behind first-place St. Louis in the Western Division.

They also:

-- Have the best intra-division record at 7-4.

-- Lead the league in power-play effectiveness with a success rate of 53.7%.

-- Lead the league in penalty killing, getting by unscathed on 72.1% of their short-handed situations.

There’s a problem with evaluating this team, however. They all cheat off each other and there is no telling who is doing his own work.

Defenders make runs on offense and even score goals, and forwards come back on defense, steal passes and occasionally block a shot.

The only guy who does his own work is goalie Victor Nogueira, because Coach Ron Newman has yet to find a suitable platoon mate.

So let’s start there.

GOALIE

Nogueira became the only goalie in the league to record a shutout since the nets were enlarged 33% at the beginning of the season when he stopped Dallas, 7-0, Saturday.

A league executive couldn’t believe it, saying, “I thought shutouts would be a thing of the past with the bigger goals.”

Actually, Nogueira himself has proven to be a throwback to the days when teams could rely on a single goalie. Not only has Nogueira been steady, his confidence has been swelling and that can be seen in his increasingly acrobatic performances.

He is second in the league with a 4.78 goals-against average.

But all is not well. Nogueira has started every game this season because there is no reliable backup. If he gets hurt, the Sockers’ fate will rest with Savva Biller, who has never played indoor.

DEFENDERS

The Sockers must rely on several factors to maintain continuity in back:

Kevin Crow’s leadership--Crow won’t admit it, but several sources insist he didn’t want to come back this year. He was convinced to postpone his retirement so he could provide stability on a defensive unit rife with inexperience.

He has provided that stability and, in fact, is credited with turning around the play of first-year players David Banks and Alex Golovnia by offering strategic tips.

Crow, however, has provided little else. Of the players who have seen action in all 26 games thus far, Crow has scored the fewest goals (two) and dealt the fewest assists (three).

Which isn’t necessarily an insult for a defender. But in this league all players must get involved in the attack if a team is to enjoy success.

Former midfielders--Newman made two successful position changes at the beginning of the season when he moved seldom-used veterans Ben Collins and Jim Gabarra to the back. Not only have they added experience on defense, but they have found their new positions to be good outlets for offensive runs. Collins has 16 points and Gabarra 14.

Current forwards--The Sockers are winning, Newman says, because everyone, forwards included, plays defense when the other guys have the ball. It is not so much the Sockers are sitting back in the defensive third, but more that midfielders and forwards are pressuring in the middle third.

Yet the Sockers are still prone to mental lapses on defense, as was evident Tuesday in Tacoma where the Stars inflicted an 8-4 loss.

MIDFIELDERS

These guys are helping on defense and scoring a lot of goals, but their job is to set up the offense, and for that they rely on one player.

As former Socker Juli Veee says, “No one on this team can pass the ball anymore except for Brian Quinn.”

Quinn has 31 of the team’s 132 assists. Also note that the Sockers were 1-5 while playing without Quinn at the beginning of the season and have gone 14-6 since.

Waad Hirmez and Paul Dougherty are most often on the receiving end of Quinn’s passes. Hirmez leads the team with 26 goals and Dougherty is second with 25.

FORWARDS

Other than Paul Wright, third on the team with 18 goals and second with 15 assists, the rest of the forwards have been having problems.

-- Keder hasn’t been able to find his way onto the 15-man playing roster. He has suited up only eight times.

-- Rod Castro has found his way to the lineup but has only eight goals in 22 games.

-- Branko Segota has missed 16 games for various reasons: a cracked right fibula, a surprise trip to his native Yugoslavia and a bout with tonsillitis. He has yet to get into a groove.

DEFENSIVE RUNNERS

Back to Juli Veee for another observation on the state of the Sockers:

“All they do anymore is run and shoot, run and shoot, run and shoot. They don’t even know how to play soccer.”

No longer do the Sockers rely on ball control the way they once did with Veee, Kaz Deyna, Jean Willrich and Ade Coker. Now they rely on speed, which is Wes Wade’s forte.

The evolution of Wade’s position gives merit to Veee’s criticism. A defensive runner is more track sprinter than soccer player. Wade plays it better than most. He comes off the bench for short spurts, usually steals or tackles the ball away from an opponent, initiates a counter-attack, makes a run toward the goal and, if he doesn’t get a pass, exits.

With the Sockers’ midfielders doing more scoring than passing these days, defensive runners, Wade and Jacques Ladouceur, have become indispensable.

COACHING

This was going to be the year that Newman was going to find out what it was like to go through a 52-game season with mediocre talent.

Instead, the league’s other seven coaches are scratching their heads. Maybe this guy does deserve some credit for putting together eight championship teams in the past nine seasons.

Newman has become an expert in piecing together a roster and turning negatives into positives.

At the beginning of the season, when he was unable to convince management to offer a contract to Dougherty, he hinted that he was not being allowed to make final roster decisions. Once the story surfaced, Dougherty was offered a contract.

Only two games into the season, when it became apparent that Saeed Bakhtiari was not the answer to the team’s defensive problems, Newman cut him and added Glenn Carbonara, who had asked for his release from the Baltimore Blast and was on his way to the National Professional Soccer League.

When the team continued to founder, Newman added veteran Michael Collins to the roster, making room for him by dropping two players who had never suited up.