Preki: Wonderful Wiz for Kansas City
A couple of weeks ago, Major League Soccer sent out a videotape featuring the top 20 goals scored this season.
If the Los Angeles Galaxy coaching staff is on its toes, it has had its players studying goal No. 18 this week.
If not, what happened on July 6 at Arrowhead Stadium could easily be repeated at the Rose Bowl tonight when the Galaxy takes on the Kansas City Wiz at 7:30 in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals.
Here’s what the videotape of goal No. 18 shows:
A Kansas City goal kick is headed onward by Mo Johnston to Wiz forward Preki, who nods it downward to himself and sets off toward the Galaxy goal. He fakes right, then cuts left, leaving Galaxy defender Greg Vanney beaten.
Robin Fraser moves in to challenge, but two more cuts by Preki leave Fraser lunging at a shadow. Manny Motajo arrives too late. Preki glances up, then steers a right-foot shot beyond the reach of diving Galaxy goalkeeper Jorge Campos and in off the left post.
As Andres Cantor would say, “Goooooooooaaaaaaal!”
“I juked them left and right,” Preki said Tuesday by phone from his home in Overland Park, Kan. “It was a nice goal.”
No surprise there. In all, Preki scored 18 “nice goals” in the regular season and assisted on 13 others. His 49 points were second-best in the league behind the Tampa Bay Mutiny’s Roy Lassiter.
In the playoffs, he has been just as hot. In the Wiz’s first-round series against the Dallas Burn, Preki showed why Kansas City Coach Ron Newman insisted that the Wiz sign him, then named him captain. All he did was:
--Score the winning goal in the 89th minute in Game 1 as the Wiz beat the Burn, 3-2, at Arrowhead Stadium.
--Score Kansas City’s only goal in a 2-1 loss to Dallas at the Cotton Bowl.
--Assist on a goal in regulation and then score one in the shootout as the Wiz clinched the series with a 3-2 victory at Dallas.
Not bad for a 33-year-old, especially one who played every minute of every regular-season game, participated in all of Kansas City’s shootouts and played the whole 90 minutes of the MLS All-Star Game.
“I feel strong, very good,” Preki said. “I think I surprised a lot of people.”
Everyone except Newman, who ignored those who saw Preki as “merely an indoor star” and was canny enough to sign him as one of the Wiz’s four marquee players.
Now, 35 games later, only the Galaxy stands between Kansas City and a trip to MLS Cup ‘96, the league’s first championship game, Oct. 20 at Foxboro Stadium.
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Predrag Radosavljevic was born June 24, 1963, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Had he grown to more than 5 feet 9 and 165 pounds, he might have been playing against Vlade Divac or Toni Kukoc today.
“I played basketball before [soccer],” Preki told the Kansas City Star earlier this year. “Basketball was my real first love. To this day, I still love to watch basketball.”
His favorite teams, he said Tuesday, are Partizan Belgrade and the Chicago Bulls. His favorite player, not surprisingly, is Michael Jordan.
But it was soccer that caught and held young Predrag, whose friends in Belgrade soon ditched that name and dubbed him Preki. He started playing at 7 and was good enough to turn professional at 20. Perennial Yugoslav power Red Star Belgrade was his first club. He later had stints with Estrella Amadora in Portugal and Everton and Portsmouth in England.
But it was as an indoor player in the United States that Preki made his name. Spotted in Europe by Bob McNab, then coach of the Tacoma Stars, Preki came to America and set both the Major Indoor Soccer League and the Continental Indoor Soccer League alight.
In nine seasons with the Tacoma Stars, St. Louis Storm and San Jose Grizzlies, he played in 370 games, scored 399 goals and had 384 assists. He was an all-star in seven of the nine seasons, MISL’s most valuable player in 1989 and CISL’s most valuable player in 1995.
All because McNab, a former Arsenal and England national team player, saw something he liked one wet evening in Yugoslavia.
“It was a rainy night and I was watching a five-versus-five game on a concrete field in Belgrade,” said McNab, who now lives in Orange County.
“I asked the interpreter, ‘Who’s the little guy up front? He’s small, but he’s got some ability.’ ”
The “little guy” was Preki.
“He had just come out of the army,” McNab said, “but he didn’t seem to be in shape. I told him later, ‘I hope you never have a war!’ ” The remark was funny at the time, but not so in retrospect.
McNab spent the remainder of the night trying to persuade Preki to come to the United States to play for Tacoma.
“We reached an agreement at about 5:30 the next morning,” McNab said.
The rest, as they say, is history.
“It’s over now,” Preki said of his indoor career. Larger opportunities beckon.
“I just got a call from [the U.S.] Immigration [and Naturalization Service] yesterday,” Preki said. “I’ve got an appointment on Oct. 24 for my [citizenship] test. If I pass, I’m going to be sworn in on the 25th.”
That would be eight days before the U.S. national team’s first qualifying game on the road to the 1998 World Cup in France--against Guatemala at RFK Stadium in Washington on Nov. 3.
Preki hopes to be playing for his new country that afternoon.
“I think I can bring some flair, some imagination,” he said of his likely contribution to the national team. “And hopefully I can score some goals.”
Steve Sampson, the U.S. coach, believes Preki will fit in well.
“His experience in England really convinced me that he has the talent and experience to play at the international level,” Sampson told the Kansas City Star in May. “For me, it’s important that he doesn’t want to just play in the World Cup but that he wants to represent the United States, and he’s convinced me of that.”
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Unpredictability is the hallmark of Preki’s game. He has the skills to accomplish almost anything he wants on the field and the imagination to match.
Listen to a few of his Kansas City teammates:
“He’s a very competitive person,” said U.S. national team midfielder Mike Sorber. “He likes to win at everything. As far as soccer goes, he’s got a lot of technique and great vision of the field. He’s a great passer, a great shooter.
“He’s a threat for 90 minutes because you never know where he can put a ball or if he’s going to get a shot off or dribble one or two guys with his great cut. So teams stay off of him a little bit and let him do his thing. You never know what’s going to happen.”
From Mark Chung: “He has great faking ability and you have to respect it. “You’ve got to try to block it, but sometimes he cuts it, then cuts it again, then takes a rocket shot, which he has.”
Newman said Preki’s temperament is ideally suited to the national team.
“He’s very quiet,” Newman said. “He doesn’t have that arrogance. I mean, he knows he can play and he’s the captain, but he’s a real gentleman.
“He’s got a family [an American wife, Trish, and two children, Nicola and Natasha]. He’s got a nice house now. He likes to gamble a little bit. He’s not a drinker. He doesn’t play golf or anything like that. He’s very much a family man.
“I feel the national team will really enjoy him. He’s done wonderful for us.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Tonight’s Game
* Who--Galaxy vs. Kansas City Wiz
* What--Major League Soccer Western Conference finals
* When--7:30
* Where--Rose Bowl
* Situation--Game 1 of best-of-three series. Game 2 Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City. Game 3, if necessary, at Rose Bowl Oct. 17.
* At stake--Place in MLS Cup ‘96, the league’s championship game
* Radio--KTNQ 1020 (Spanish)
* Head to head--Kansas City 3, Galaxy 1
