Sockers Apply to Join New League : Soccer: Smaller salary cap might keep familiar players out, however.
Having out-lived two leagues, the Sockers on Wednesday applied for membership in a third--the Continental Indoor Soccer League, which plans a 28-game, June-through-September inaugural season next year.
Don’t expect the same old Sockers, though. The salary cap in the CISL figures to be $160,000 per team. That compares to $550,000 in the Major Soccer League, which played 40 games last season and collapsed July 10.
“I don’t know about anyone else,” said Thompson Usiyan, a seven-year MSL veteran who spent 1991-92 with the Sockers, “but I know I won’t be back. I was hoping I could play one more year, but I don’t think I can afford to play in the CISL.
“It will be a good league for kids just graduated from college. They can play on the weekend and hone their skills. I just hope the kids who start out in the CISL will be around in five or 10 years to see the fruits of their labor . . . I’ve been here for eight years, and the way soccer in America has been going, it just keeps regressing. I wish the kids who start in this league good luck.”
Usiyan said he will go back to school and get a degree in physical therapy.
Though the players will change, Ron Newman, the club’s only coach since it moved indoors in 1980, will be back as will Chairman Oscar Ancira, who initially resisted overtures from CISL founder Ron Weinstein.
“I started the process by playing devil’s advocate,” Ancira said. “But now I am convinced it will work. The demise of the MSL gave us a good excuse to walk away, so it’s not like we have to be in soccer. It’s that we would like to be.”
NBA owners in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Phoenix and Dallas have committed to the new league.
“I think these guys want to do it right,” Ancira added. “And part of their logic in doing it right is starting small. This is the way we manage our business (Delimex, a frozen food company). We didn’t go out and invest $10 million to start off. We put in a little bit at a time, and as the company grew, we made investments. So if it worked with Delimex, I think it will work here.”
Owners of the Pittsburgh Penguins also are expected to join the CISL, as are groups in Anaheim, Portland, Memphis, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Atlanta. Weinstein said the Sockers coming aboard will facilitate the application process in these cities.
“Talk only lasts so long,” Weinstein said. “People like to see some validity. So with the Sockers joining the league we now have the most successful indoor soccer team tied in with the proven entrepreneurial success of the NBA owners.”
Despite Usiyan’s comments, Newman said he hopes to bring back some Socker players.
“We’ll do what we can to hold them,” he said.
Newman added that it might be best to break up the team that has won 10 championships in the past 11 years, a string of success that started in the North American Soccer League and one Newman thinks led to the MSL’s downfall.
“The owners are going to have to get together and create some sort of picture of how they’re going to have parity, how they’re going to move the players around and how they can prevent the Sockers from dominating the league.” Newman said. “I certainly hope we dominate, but I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the league for us to be able to do it.”
Ancira said he will keep the front office open with a skeleton crew until January, when he will hire a full staff to begin preparing for the club’s first summer indoor season.
