To Win Without Quinn? : Sockers: With the passing specialist leaving to join the U.S. national team, MSL champions must adjust their style.
The Sockers insist history will not be repeated when midfielder Brian Quinn leaves them after tonight’s game against Baltimore to begin training with the U.S. national team.
Still, those first six games of the 1990-91 season are far from a distant memory.
The Sockers compiled a 1-5 record in that time and plummeted to the bottom of the Western Division. They did so while Quinn watched from the sideline, hobbled by a right groin strain.
But when Quinn returned for the seventh game, the Sockers immediately improved, and by the 18th game they had reached .500. That’s when Paul Dougherty pinpointed the key to the turnaround.
“Brian Quinn’s playing,” he said then.
Now Dougherty and the rest of the Sockers stare at a similar situation. Because Quinn signed a full-time contract with the U.S. national team during the summer, he had to cut short his commitment to the Sockers--he was signed with them only through today.
“There’s going to be a big gap to fill,” Dougherty said. “Brian has been the heart and soul of the Sockers for a long time.”
Another piece of history that only three current Sockers other than Quinn (Dougherty, Kevin Crow and Jacques Ladouceur) were around to remember illustrates how much Quinn means to this team:
In 1987 Quinn pulled his right hamstring in Game 1 of the MSL Western Division finals and missed the next five games. Those remain the only playoff games Quinn has missed in his eight-plus years with the Sockers.
Without Quinn, the Sockers failed to get by the Tacoma Stars in that series and now 1987 stands as the only interruption in the team’s string of nine indoor championships.
Quinn has proved there is more to the Sockers than running and shooting--there is also passing, and it is that passing that links everything together.
“I don’t always want to score,” Quinn said. “I figure there’s enough talent on this team that we’ll get goals. I think we can get them more subtly than banging the ball up field and shooting. I think goals are created after the sixth, seventh or eighth passes.”
Those words ring similar to the philosophies of former Sockers Juli Veee, Jean Willrich and Steve Zungul, all of whom played in another era when six, seven and eight passes before shooting was the norm rather than the exception.
That Quinn invokes the refrain of his former teammates as he prepares to leave underlines another point:
As a play-making midfielder, Quinn is a member of what in indoor soccer is a vanishing species.
Passing? Who needs it? After tonight’s game, the Sockers’ style will have to evolve to what the rest of the Major Soccer League already has become.
Run and shoot.
That shouldn’t really be a problem, Coach Ron Newman and his assistant, Eric Geyer, insist. There are 15 other players on the roster, and, like Quinn, they all have their individual strengths, assets that surfaced in three games Quinn missed this year. The Sockers won two of them.
Besides, Geyer pointed out, Quinn can only dictate the flow of a game part of the time.
“It’s not like Quinny doesn’t come off the field every two minutes,” Geyer said. “He doesn’t play the entire game.”
Newman, too, doesn’t believe the Sockers will miss Quinn, at least not at the Sports Arena. In fact, he paused and pondered a few moments before answering a question about what kind of void his star midfielder is likely to leave.
In the locker room as a team leader? No. On the bench orchestrating a plan of attack? No. On the field navigating the ball through the midfield? No, not there either.
“We’ll miss Quinny more than anywhere in practice,” Newman finally said. “He’s very committed and the way he gets out there and buzzes around the field, he sets a very good standard.”
Neither does Quinn see his teammates suffering without him.
“I think maybe their style will change a little bit,” he said. “And that’s only because I have a different style than Paul Wright, Tim Wittman or even Jacques Ladouceur. (Future success for the Sockers) will be a matter of the guys playing their own game and sticking with their strengths.”
But that isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Paul Wright’s forte is scoring goals. Paul Dougherty’s forte is scoring goals. Thompson Usiyan’s forte is scoring goals. Tim Wittman’s forte is scoring goals. John Kerr’s forte is scoring goals.
Not exactly a multifaceted group.
What’s needed is a quarterback, and to fill that role, Newman has pegged Ladouceur, a six-year veteran who has spent most of his career as a defensive runner but who this year has been moved to the midfield and has responded with his most productive campaign.
Before Saturday’s game in Wichita, Ladouceur had scored 13 goals and assisted on eight others. The 13 goals are already a career high, and the eight assists are three shy of the 11 he tallied in 52 games during 1989-90, his most productive season.
But Ladouceur insists he cannot replace Quinn.
“Brian likes to get the ball, hold the ball, control the ball and control the play,” Ladouceur said. “And we don’t have somebody else who likes to do that to the extent Brian does. I think my style is somewhat like his--I like to do a lot of things he does, but in different ways. He’ll hold it from different people, get it by one guy, then a second, then a third, and then knock the ball up field. I can hold it from the first guy, but then I get the feeling I need to (pass) the ball.”
Besides bringing Ladouceur to the center of the Sockers’ game, Quinn’s absence could mean one of two other Sockers will step forward.
One is Dougherty, who returned to the Sockers before the 1990-91 season after a brief stint in outdoor soccer back home in England. Dougherty said he returned because he liked the Sockers’ style of play, moving the ball up field with short, precise passes.
But if the Sockers are to continue in that vein, Dougherty will have to be the one to insist on it.
“I can’t see us continuing to play like we are now (with Quinn),” he said. “What he would orchestrate by himself, now we’re going to have to go through several different channels. Quinny is known around the league as the best there is in the game in passing. One person can’t replace Brian Quinn--it’s going to take everybody.”
Already Dougherty has stepped up his performance in the midfield. Since his first full season with the Sockers, his goal production has been nearly twice his assist total (101-54)--until this year.
Before Saturday’s game in Wichita, Dougherty was tied with Quinn for the team lead in assists with 15. He also had scored 11 goals.
But the consensus among Sockers is that the midfield is likely to be bypassed. Paul Wright, who currently switches with Quinn, has been doing that all season simply by treating the midfield like Carl Lewis treats 100 meters--racing right over it.
So, too, have defenders David Banks and Kevin Crow who sometimes treat the midfield like John Elway treats a third-and-long, traversing it with long passes.
But the Sockers haven’t been doing enough of that, according to the other player who could step forward in Quinn’s stead, forward Thompson Usiyan.
Usiyan last year accounted for 64 goals and assisted on 38 others for the St. Louis Storm but this year has been rather silent (nine goals and 10 assists before Saturday’s game in Wichita).
Part of the problem, both he and Quinn say, is that their styles clash. Quinn likes to control the ball in the midfield; Usiyan likes to take those long passes in the attacking third and control the ball there.
“Brian likes the ball at his feet,” Usiyan said. “I like to take long balls near the goal where I can hold it and (teammates) can make runs off me.”
In other words, Usiyan likes to do in the offensive third what Quinn does in the midfield--create plays.
But Usiyan has been somewhat uncomfortable asserting that style.
“I don’t feel like this is my team yet,” Usiyan said. “This team has won so many championships and has so many players who have been through the thick and thin. I’m still trying to find my way around. I have to watch my step.”
With Quinn leaving, Usiyan thinks he’ll have an opportunity to get back in his old rhythm.
“It’s going to be interesting,” he said. “You’ll just have to stay tuned and see what happens.”
Socker Notes
To replace Brian Quinn, a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Coach Ron Newman has sent a minimum-salary contract proposal to another Belfast native, defender Jimmy McGeough who played 30 games in 1990-91, his rookie season, with the Wichita Wings. Newman said McGeough, who is disappointed with the contract’s financial terms, will arrive Jan. 27 if he decides to sign. Quinn said he would consider a similar arrangement for next season, signing a short-term contract with the Sockers if his national team responsibilities allow. . . . Keeping to their campaign of promoting every game, the Sockers will give away bumper stickers at tonight’s game vs. the Blast.
