by Michael Lewis
Through the decades, one of the great rivalries of arena and indoor soccer has been the San Diego Sockers vs. the Baltimore Blast.
Much sweat has been left on the arena floor from both teams, whether from a regular-season clash or a playoff final confrontation.
This Major Arena Soccer League season, however, the teams are not scheduled to play each other during the 24-game regular season. So, for those two foes to meet, they would have to advance to the championship series.
Sockers general manager Sean Bowers, who has been a player for Baltimore and San Diego, understood the importance of continuing such an east-west rivalry.
"That's something as a league we need to do a better job of--rekindling those type of rivalries," said Bowers. "That's something where you can mark it on your calendar every year that you're going to have them on our schedule. Many positive things would happen. I think the fan base would increase in that game. The game would be a great game. Even though it's in the middle of the season, it might not mean much at that particular time. There would be some ramifications of that game as you go down in the playoffs and meet in the finals and so on and so forth.
"So, I am a proponent of having the old rivalries coming back into play."
Bowers rattled off some great rivalries from the National Premier Soccer League days, which also included the Midwest trio of Milwaukee, St. Louis and Kansas City.
"We need more of that, not only for the good of the game in terms of the good brand of indoor soccer, but also the awareness of all these other teams," he said, “that there are good teams all around and that the league is thriving. This is a topic of conversation that I've had many times. In terms of some of the owners, Kevin [Milliken, vice president of business development], Josh [Schaub, commissioner]. I hope to see more of these type of rivalry games in the future."
Of course, since arena and indoor soccer are played in such close quarters and the players know each other, sometimes there can be loads of fouls, penalties and even on occasion fisticuffs.
"At the end of the day, no matter what comes of it, whether it's a great game or a penalty-ridden game, even if you have fights or whatever, it's good for the league," Bowers said. "The Pittsburgh Steelers vs. the Baltimore Ravens and it's a punch-in-the-mouth, physical kind of a football game. People look forward to watching that. People look forward going to. I think that now with the league being as stable as it is, those are things we need to institute to create rivalries."
Bowers noted that the Sockers have a rivalry in California with the Ontario Fury, which probably will go up a level or two after the San Diego trade that sent goalkeeper Chris Toth to the Fury.
"Now that Chris is there, it's even more of a rivalry," Bowers added. "We need to do these regional rivalries, division or conference rivalry. We also have to exploit what we had in the past with Baltimore. When I was a kid, I used to watch Baltimore-San Diego Sockers play. I used to go to the games. So, I'm rich in that type of tradition. So, I think the youth these days come to the games need to understand it and there's a history to be told of it."
In outdoor soccer, there are some great derbies in Europe, South America and even in Major League soccer (New York Red Bulls vs. New York City FC and LA Galaxy vs. the Los Angeles FC, for example).
"When you have things like that, tempers come up, the importance of the game comes up, the pressure comes up," said Bowers. "It breeds the type of game that you want to see all the time, you really do."
Commissioner Schaub indicated that the league might just bring back those rivalries for the 2019-2010 season.
"I can't speak on behalf of the board because ultimately they made the decision to go to inter-conference play this year and not have cross-conference play," said Schaub. "I think what I am really hearing based on just how the schedule turned out, and the kind of reaction is despite the increased of travel costs that the cross-conference will bring, we definitely have to do it. We have to renew the rivalries. Not only Baltimore, but Tacoma-San Diego-Baltimore, Dallas-Baltimore, I know Milwaukee wants to have some of those games as well. It will come.
"I think inevitably the fans, what we can do from the media perspective, the appeal for television for some of those rivalries, that's going to be a go, a green light for us again next year. Like I said, there's going to be increased travel costs. We as a league as operator need to figure out from the business side how to create more revenue from those rivalries and that's the bottom line."
