INDOOR SOCCER

The Sockers’ opening day of training camp provided Coach Ron Newman with two puzzles:

How to keep three foreign players with the league-allotted one new visa, and how to fill the scoring void created by the departures of Waad Hirmez (43 goals last year), Paul Wright (38) and Branko Segota (26).

There are three strong candidates for the visa: Soviet midfielder Alex Khapsalis, Nigerian forward John Olu Molomo and Spanish midfielder Jose Antonio Gomez.

Khapsalis is 31 and has played several years in the Soviet first division. Gomez is 28 and has played in the Mexican first division.

“Molomo is only 22,” Newman said, “And he’s a very promising prospect, but we might run out of visas before we get to him.”

The top candidate at forward is Ezekiel Doe, a former Liberian national team player who has never played indoors. Doe has been studying in the U.S. for the past four years so the MSL does not consider him a first-year visa player.