Cleveland Rallies by Sockers : MSL: Crunch continues its resurgence with 8-5 victory, dropping the Sockers into third place.

The Sockers on Thursday crossed the path of the Cleveland Crunch, who no longer are keeping a low profile in the Major Soccer League.

The Crunch’s offense, which began the season incognito as the team sank into last place, continued to emerge from its shroud in rallying for an 8-5 victory over the Sockers (8-6) in front of 6,809 at the Coliseum.

The Sockers fell into third place, but remain a game behind front-running Wichita. The Crunch (6-8) now had won five of nine and are only three games out of first place. Cleveland won only one of its first five games.

The recent performances appear more indicative of the team that was picked by MSL coaches to unseat the Sockers as champions.

The Crunch’s early slump came because Cleveland had no one in the midfield who could direct the forwards, all of whom wanted the ball. Mike Sweeney was expected to play that role but elected not to sign after the Major Soccer League forced another salary-cap reduction on the players’ union.

And although veteran midfielder Kai Haaskivi appears to have sparked the turnaround, having returned for the season’s sixth game from a year-long layoff after reconstructive knee surgery, Sockers’ Coach Ron Newman insists Haaskivi has had little to do with the Crunch’s new trend.

“Kai didn’t seem to play that much (Thursday),” Newman said. “The key to stopping Cleveland is to stop (Hector) Marinaro and (Zoran) Karic. And we didn’t do that.”

Marinaro added two goals to his season total of 19, and Karic also scored twice and now has 17 goals.

Haaskivi, Michael King, Chris Szanto and David Hoggan also kicked in goals for the Crunch.

Most of Cleveland’s scores came as a result of counterattacks.

“And we’re a team that’s supposed to score off counterattacks,” Newman said. “But instead they got many of their goals because we pushed forward too much.”

Newman was especially upset that his team allowed Cleveland to score two quick goals that erased a 4-3 Sockers lead early in the third quarter.

After Thompson Usiyan gave the Sockers’ their first lead of with his ninth goal of the season 32 seconds into the second half, Karic came right back with his second goal of the game to forge a tie.

“It looked like we were going to take control of the game (after Usiyan’s goal),” Newman said. “But one minute later they scored, and that gave them the confidence to keep plugging away at us. If we could have killed their counterattacks right there, in the fourth quarter they would have had to come at us and we could have started to counterattack.”

The Sockers got goals from five different players. Besides Usiyan, Paul Wright, Paul Dougherty, Tim Wittman and Jacques Ladouceur scored single goals. Dougherty added two assists.

Before Ladouceur scored late in the fourth quarter to pull the Sockers within two, 7-5, Cleveland’s Tom Tanner got away with an illegal hand ball in the penalty area when he batted a ball wide that was heading into an open net.

“It was one of those things that both referees (Gino Dippolito and Vito Testa) decided they didn’t see it,” Newman said. “And one of them was right there along our bench with the same view we had. We all saw it, but he didn’t. I guess they didn’t want Cleveland to lose.”