Restart Opportunity

by Steve De Rose
January 29, 2003 - Major Indoor Soccer League 2 (MISL 2)

Hello again, readers. It is a privilege to be able to communicate with you about indoor soccer in this, the first season of the (merged) Major Indoor Soccer League. The 2002-03 season, with the active participation of the Dallas Sidekicks and the San Diego Sockers, and the inactive status of the Saint Louis Steamers, of the World Indoor Soccer League, is the first time there has been one unified, top-division, indoor soccer league since 1992-93. Before then, you must go back to 1982-83.

Accomplishing the merger involved both sides assenting to aspects which were formerly anathema to them. The W.I.S.L. sides were not keen on multi-point scoring and penalized goalkeepers having to serve their time in the penalty box. The M.I.S.L. franchises agreed to start the 2002-03 season over a month ahead of time in order to allow the participating sides from the W.I.S.L. to schedule home games in the time of year when they had typically hosted W.I.S.L. matches.

Both factions lobbied diligently to try to convince the Sacramento Knights to actively compete this season, but their efforts ultimately failed, as the owners of the Knights showed their true face. The Knights were nothing but an arena date-filler for when their almighty basketball team was not playing. If there was any possibility that the indoor soccer team might need a home date which could conflict with one for the basketball team, this was too much of a risk. The M.I.S.L. got a check from the owners in what amounts to a one-time alimony payment.

The reason you have not seen any columns from yours truly is because I have not been at many games so far this season. I viewed two games in San Diego in early December. I have not yet been to any games in Milwaukee. The League has directed each franchise to televise six games this season, but if you do not have access to a big ugly dish (Practically every tavern which had one ten years ago has converted over to DirecTV®), you are unable to receive them. Still muddying the water, some teams show their matches on cable-company-exclusive local channels. There is some good news as far as television goes, however. That is below.

I have no intention of re-writing the League's and/or each team's press releases for this column. You can click on another link here at Our Sports Central to get those.

This past weekend, I went to Baltimore, MD. I thank Amy Keller of the Blast front office for her assistance.

For the past two seasons, the Blast have been an enigma. How a team with so many quality indoor soccer players could be unable to advance far in the playoffs might be an acceptable doctoral dissertation for somebody at Johns Hopkins University. Coming into these games, the Blast had yet to have a winning streak. Baltimore was 7-14. This had them at the foot of the Eastern Conference. Significantly, after this weekend, when they host the Philadelphia KiXX and the Milwaukee Wave, of their eleven remaining matches, eight will be on the road.

First off, they had a challenging match versus the Kansas City Comets. The Comets had beaten them by 12-17 at the Baltimore Arena back in October. This night, Kansas City would be without the play of Nino DaSilva, who had been ejected from the Comets' last game. The Blast were aided by the early return of Sean Bowers, who was not expected to return to active play for another three weeks after spraining his ankle in practice on January 2.

To this observer, it seemed that the Comets could not quite get it all together on Friday night. The Blast played with confidence atypical for a team with its record. They always seemed to have the proper response for whenever they were challenged. The most salient example of this being when, after allowing a Comets' goal on a scrambling play when Bill Sedgewick managed to cram a ball through from the right wing corner, and Dino Delevski knocked it home on the goal line, at the 14:50 mark of the third quarter, which compressed the Blast lead to 8-7. The Blast took the fourth quarter kickoff, assailed the Comets' third, and got the all-important next goal from Dewan Bader 1:25 in. Half a quarter later, Tarik Walker would elude both a Comets' defender, and Comets' GK Paolo Ceccarelli to the rebound of his own shot, which he sunk, and then the match was truthfully decided. Billy Nelson would roll one into a vacated net for the final score of 15-7.

For Saturday night, the Blast had another puzzler. They would contend the San Diego Sockers. The Sockers had won both matches played this season versus the Blast. This included the night of the 1983-84 "Baltimore Legends Game," when the Sockers reamed the Blast, 11-20.

But the Sockers were forced to travel this day from Milwaukee, where they had been pulverized by the Wave, 19-2. Losing in such a comprehensive manner affects all players, whether or not they state they want to get back to game action quickly.

One aspect which was intriguing was that this was the first match back in Baltimore for Paul Wright. Wright, no stranger to controversy, had qualms at the succinct dismissal of Kevin Healey as head coach, and refused to play anymore. It soon became clear that there was only one team in the League for whom he would play, that being the Sockers. Having no position from which to negotiate, the Blast had to put him on waivers for the intention of terminating his contract, and guess which side put in a claim? Yes.

The Sockers got off to the good start that night. I cannot write that the Blast underestimated them, but the Sockers were determined to not let themselves get put down as suddenly as last night. The Blast were concentrating on Wright each time he entered the field. Their defenders keyed on denying him the ball. This caused Wright to pull back further into midfield.

The attention being paid to Wright could not be more elastic. The Sockers' second line forwards, "Chile" Farias and Mariano Bollella, were facing less talented defenders, and they were capitalizing. Bollella scored halfway through the first quarter, and nearly a minute into the second, to give the Sockers a 0-4 lead.

The game seemed to flip on a contentious goal scored by the Blast's Dewan Bader in the fifth minute of the quarter. Bader's shot beat Sockers' GK "D. J." Horvath, but did it originate from at or inside the three-point arc? Our officials Joe Manfré and Tim Tyma declared it a three-point goal. They then proceeded to issue a misconduct penalty to Sockers' captain Alejandro Cardenas for suggesting they should ask their assistant referees. Fifty seconds later, Bader was getting around Bollella, who grabbed his arm and pulled him down to the turf. This was properly penalized, but the flurry of decisions going contrary to the Sockers irked Carlos Calderson, who protested too fervently. He was given a five-minute penalty for dissent. On the restart, Baltimore's Danny Kelly, after another Blast player had run over the ball, hooked his shot over D.J.'s shoulder for a man-advantage goal. In the ninth minute, Kelly found an open Lance Johnson overlapping, and his shot made it 7-4.

The Sockers attempt to come back in the first half was hurt when Wright picked up his third foul with just under five minutes remaining. A fourth foul by him in the half would trigger another Blast man-advantage. This is another rule adopted from the W.I.S.L. His shifts were cut back.

The Sockers came back out in the third quarter and finally got a call to go their way. A shot by Chile from beyond the arc on the left of center hit somebody in the Blast penalty box and deflected slightly up and over Blast GK's Brett Phillips left shoulder. Joe Manfré, on the far side of the field, gestured with his hand that the ball had glanced off somebody's head. He felt that said person was the Sockers' Wright. Wright maintained that he had felt nothing strike him, and gestured obliquely to a Blast defender nearby. Tim Tyma, on the near side, came over to the penalty box and asked the assistant referee, Robert Wiley, what he had seen. After some discussion, it was determined that the ball had entered the net after last being touched by a Blast player. This levelled the score at seven. The Blast revved it up a bit, but the Sockers' defense held together well enough, and D.J. made competent distributions. The Blast could not put the ball across the goal line. They did come within millimeters once, but Wright, backmarking, swept a slow-rolling ball that had gotten between D.J. and the far post. The Sockers retook the lead at 7-9 when Chile found a half-open Bollella, and his shot from twenty feet out beat Phillips to his left. The Blast would get a tying goal from Bader at 9:34. But the Sockers got what looked to be a momentum-slayer when Aaron Susi, playing on the third line, collected a loose ball in defensive midfield, strolled across the midfield stripe, and when nobody in the Blast's defense seemed concerned, let loose a low shot from outside the yellow line on the left wing. It zoomed past Phillips for a 9-12 Sockers' lead, which was the score after the third quarter.

Baltimore was 0-11 when trailing after the third quarter. The Sockers were 6-1 when leading after such. Tonight, though, I think the soccer gods came down on the Blast's side. In the fourth quarter, the efforts were there for both teams, but in the crucial moments, when 50/50 balls were in play, the Blast got to them, and they led to scoring opportunities. Wakefield's perserverance on a ball bouncing around between the three-point arc and the top of the penalty box led to him delivering a pass over to Denison Cabral. His second-touch shot from the center zipped past a partially screened D.J. Seventy-one seconds afterward, Bader got position on a Sockers' defender, and when another slipped off onto him, he found the open man, Craig Scheer, who sunk his chance for 13-12. Less than a minute later, Cabral came down the left wing, and attempted to switch the ball into the right wing corner. His cross hit the Sockers' Cardenas and deflected beyond a cross-anticipating D.J. The dagger-plunge for the Sockers was in the tenth minute when Wright picked up his third foul of this half, two of which were for handballs, and the third for pushing going for a loose ball in the Sockers' defensive third. On the foul restart, Sean Bowers pushed the ball to his left where a marauding Danny Kelly struck it first time from just inside the three-point arc. It soared past D.J. for a five-point Blast lead. The Sockers would go to Robbie Aristodemo as sixth attacker with four minutes left, but could not come any closer.

Can the Blast come back and get into the playoffs? It is going to be a challenge for them. The high number of their remaining games being on the road is daunting. But they are mostly composed of veteran players who have experience at playing in hostile buildings.

I will not advance a guess for the Sockers' postseason chance. I believe they have learned that the level of play in the (new) M.I.S.L. is different from that of the W.I.S.L. last season. If I could offer some advice, I would urge them to find some better-quality players for their second and third lines. Yes, Wright could be one of those players.

I must address one issue which affects those who listen to the Sockers' English-language radio broadcasts. If the Sockers are going to request the "official" time-outs so they can run a 30-second radio commercial during it, Mark Rogondino needs to throw it back to the studio much quicker. After each time-out had elapsed, play was restarted while KPOP was still in commercial. At least once, the Blast nearly scored in the seconds between the restart on the field and the resumption of play-by-play on the radio.

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In more significant news, the League announced a television agreement with FOX Sports World. The telecasts will start on this Friday, 31 January. All of the games will be edited down to a two-hour time slot. They will be aired from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm [ET]. The table below denotes the games which will show.

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I would like to inform all of my readers that I will be in Cleveland, OH, this weekend for the Force's matches versus the Sockers (Friday) and the Comets (Sunday). I also intend to be in Milwaukee, WI, on the fifteenth for the Wave's game against the Harrisburg Heat. You can look for me on media row.

Major Indoor Soccer League 2 Stories from January 29, 2003

• Restart Opportunity - OSC Original by Steve De Rose
• Sockers Ready for Next Home Game - San Diego Sockers
• Force Opens Home Stand - Cleveland Force
• Sidekicks host San Diego Sat. Feb 1 @ 7pm - Reunion Arena - Dallas Sidekicks

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.