Infighting Is in Vogue for Sockers

Memo to the Cleveland Crunch:

Don’t even think about using the divide and conquer strategy on the Sockers as you enter Game 2 of the MSL championship series at 6:05 tonight at the Sports Arena.

There’s no use dividing an already divided team.

Divided, though, is almost a euphemism.

There is so much tension on this team that contempt and ill will often translate into squabbles on the bench during games . Moreover, the Sockers appear to thrive on their internal bickering.

“If you see that this bench is quiet,” Sockers Coach Ron Newman said, “It either means that they’re losing or that they don’t care.”

In Game 1, won by the Sockers, 8-4, the San Diego bench looked like a reincarnation of the “Morton Downey Jr. Show.”

Teammates yelled at teammates, coaches screamed at players, and players gave it right back to the coaches.

Call it creative insubordination.

“Some people see this and call it disrespect,” said Newman’s assistant, Erich Geyer, who should be made to wear one of those fluorescent yellow jackets since he spends much of the game keeping heated arguments from igniting into fistfights. “But we actually have a very disciplined team when it comes down to the things we do on the field.”

These guys go at it on the bench like Archie and the Meat Head do at the dinner table, then come out on the field and get along better than Wally and the Beav before one or the other is about to get “hollered at.”

“Six different players scored our eight goals Friday night,” Geyer said. “That’s a sign of teamwork.”

Actually, there were seven: Branko Segota, who kicked in two, Paul Dougherty, Alex Golovnia, Glenn Carbonara, Waad Hirmez, Kevin Crow and Brian Quinn.

Guess you could say all the goals spilled over from the bench, which was a bit more intense than usual.

“I’d say in the playoffs we’re a bit more riled up,” said midfielder Paul Dougherty, who spent much of the first half verbally jousting with Waad Hirmez. “And I’m sure it will get a lot worse as we get into the later games.”

Still, it got pretty heated early Friday.

“In the first half, Waady (Hirmez) and Paul (Dougherty) hated the living sight of each other,” Newman said. “But then they were hugging each other at the end of the second half.”

All the yelling, screaming and accusations were punctuated late in the third quarter when Newman and Wes Wade went at it.

Geyer had to separate the two.

“He just made a stupid remark and I told him to keep quiet,” Newman said.

Wade was unavailable for comment.

“This sort of thing is normal for any team,” Newman said. “You have to have the same intensity on the bench as you do on the field. You can’t keep turning it off and turning it on.”

That statement could very well provoke another argument. One player already has disagreed: Dougherty.

“This is unique to the Sockers,” said Dougherty, who played in Baltimore last year. “I don’t know why that is, but it works. You would think all the arguing would break your concentration, but it goes the other way. I guess if you open your big mouth, you have something to live up to.”

Even Geyer disagreed with the boss.

“You don’t see much (arguing) at all on other teams,” he said. “But that’s the secret to Ron Newman’s success. He lets the players have their freedom of expression, and, sure, they show it on the bench, but they show it on the field in the way they play, too.”

“Hey,” Newman said, “all it means is that the lads are into the game and demanding more out of themselves and out of each other.”

Added Dougherty, “There are a lot of perfectionists out there, and if you give anything less, people are going to be ticked off.”

MSL Notes

Commissioner Earl Foreman is in town for the series and earlier spoke to the media, covering a wide range of issues. All dealt with a singular theme: Who’s going to be in the league next year? . . . Foreman, who recently met with National Professional Soccer League officials, was evasive on whether any NPSL teams would join the MSL. “We came, we saw, we listened,” Foreman said. What he did not say is that when it became obvious the talks were going nowhere, NPSL Commissioner Steve Paxos offered to sell the Milwaukee franchise to the MSL for $350,000. The offer was laughed off. . . . The commissioner also said he expects an announcement on Dallas re-entering the league in a week to 10 days. . . . Whether the league will expand to Buffalo also should be known in that time frame. “The people we’re dealing with are experienced professionals and they want to make sure they do things right,” he said when asked if any hurdles remained. What about the Sockers? Still no word from owner Ron Fowler, and even Foreman appeared unsure of their status. “I’m going to spend some time with Ron this weekend,” Foreman said. “I’ll be here until Monday, maybe longer if need be.”