Segota Doing Well, but Storm is Losing

Can you imagine, Preki and me on the same line? We’ll be unstoppable.

--BRANKO SEGOTA, September, 1991

Former Socker Branko Segota never shrouds his feelings. Even though he helped the Sockers to six indoor championships, he didn’t like it here and he told everyone who asked.

He had plenty of reasons to be gloomy in Southern California. He insists owners perpetually renegotiated his salary downward. And he is adamant that Coach Ron Newman was having the same effect on his statistics.

Following the Sockers’ ninth championship, last May, Segota’s four-year contract finally had run its course. He was a free-agent and Segota made it clear he would use the opportunity to sign with the St. Louis Storm.

In St. Louis, Segota was reunited with Coach Don Popovic, a fellow Yugoslav who coaxed Segota out of high school in 1978 to join the New York Arrows and the fledging Major Indoor Soccer League.

“I was very young then,” Segota said. “And Stevie (Zungul, another Yugoslav) and Pops became a couple close friends. We did a lot of things together.”

Moving to St. Louis gave Segota an opportunity to line up with another Yugoslav, Preki, the latest in a long line of dominant forwards from that country.

But it wasn’t that easy. As soon as Segota declared himself a free agent, Newman waved a red flag, whipped out the collective bargaining agreement and pointed out a clause that gives clubs a one-time right to retain their free-agents-to-be by matching the highest offers they receive elsewhere.

The two sides eventually grew up and hastened a compromise: Segota was traded to St. Louis for Thompson Usiyan, who Popovic, planning on enlisting Segota all along, wouldn’t have been able to afford, anyway.

Can you imagine, Preki and me on the same line? We’ll be unstoppable.

Those were Segota’s parting words to Oscar Ancira, who less than three months earlier had become the Sockers’ new managing general partner.

“It was like San Diego had absolutely no chance and St. Louis would just kick ass with (Segota) and Preki,” Ancira said. “But the Yankees have proven over and over again that a bunch of stars on one team doesn’t guarantee a winning season.”

Now the Storm are proving it once again. The tag “unstoppable” can be applied to the Storm’s propensity for losing. At 7-14 they have sunk to last place in the seven-team league, seven games behind the front-running Sockers (13-6).

Still, Segota doesn’t flinch.

“The thing is,” Segota said earlier this week, “we didn’t gel as a team. Preki and I gelled well together, but the rest of the team couldn’t get it going.”

It appears Segota’s actions also are gelling with his words. After watching his goal production slip in each of the past three seasons, Segota is back on the ascent. Roughly midway through the season, his 27 goals is already one more than he scored all of last season. He also has 16 assists.

His numbers support the contention that Segota’s decline was more mental than physical. Segota, the MSL’s No. 2 all-time scoring leader with 812 points (443 goals, 369 assists), didn’t want to play in San Diego, so he didn’t.

“The only thing that was wrong with me was up here,” Segota said Sept. 9, the day he was traded. “Ron Newman and I never got along.”

Said Newman that day, “My feeling is wherever he goes, he’s going to perform much better and I think he’ll come back to be a thorn in our side.”

Sure enough, Segota has scored twice in the three games between the two teams. Yet the Sockers have won two of those and remain at the opposite end of the standings.

It appears Segota and Preki, while running up their totals, also are contributing to the Yankee syndrome.

“Branko is playing very good soccer,” Popovic said. “He has been our best player on the field (recently). . . . But I brought in some players who didn’t fit in with who we already had here, and when the season started, the players weren’t complimenting each other very well.”

There is an undercurrent of thought critical of Popovic, suggesting he should have been cognizant of such danger.

The Storm already enlisted such game-breakers as Preki (68 goals a year ago), Godfrey Ingram (39 goals), and, to a lesser extent, defenders Daryl Doran (17) and Fernando Clavijo (15).

Now comes Segota followed by a bevy of forwards who also like to shoot: Ted Eck (27 goals with Kansas City last year), Kevin Hundelt (29 goals in Kansas City), George Pastor (53 goals with Milwaukee of the National Professional Soccer League), and, six games into the season, Waad Hirmez (43 goals with the Sockers).

As Hirmez said, “Pops like players who can play with the ball.”

It’s not so much a lack of chemistry, then, as it is a lack of soccer balls to go around.

Their numbers this season: Hirmez, three goals; Pastor, nine; Hundelt five; and Eck, 14.

So, what to do? Recently, Popovic moved Hundelt and Hirmez to defense, trying to shore up a unit that has been reeling since goalie Zoltan Toth retired two games into the season, citing a knee injury.

Popovic has made several other switches during the year and now he has his team believing it can still make the playoffs.