Sockers Match Preview // Tacoma
The San Diego Sockers—presented by Kaiser Permanente—travel back to the Pacific Northwest to take on the Tacoma Stars on Saturday night at the accesso ShoWare Center in Kent, Washington. The match is set for a 6:05pm PST kickoff and will be televised domestically on MASL+ and MASL TV (on YouTube), as well as supplemental coverage on the National Soccer Network and Victory+, and international coverage on Sportworld, Fox Sports Mexico, and the Unbeaten Network.
The Sockers (9-4-2, 27 points) are on a five-match points streak (4-0-1), and sit within striking range of the top spot in the Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) standings table. Milwaukee currently is in first place with 30 points and 16 matches played, one more than the 15 played by San Diego. Kansas City sits between the Sockers and Wave with 28 points and 17 matches played. This weekend, Milwaukee plays twice (at Baltimore, vs St. Louis) and Kansas City once (vs Utica).
San Diego is hoping for a moment of stability in a tumultuous season that has rarely given the club a chance to get their legs firmly underneath them. Since the first weekend of January, the Sockers have had four multi-match weekends requiring long travel (airplane or 8-hour bus ride) in-between the two matches, including last weekend’s Saturday game in Kansas City and Sunday afternoon game at home against Empire. The Sockers have suffered through an unprecedented wave of injuries that at times have knocked as many as twelve players off the available roster and continue to impact critical areas of the team. The next two weekends only have the Sockers playing a single match, and while the first week of March sees San Diego play twice, they will have two days between matches and only travel two hours up the highway to Ontario. The club is hopeful that these three weeks of relative calm will steel the roster for the final stretch, which involves two more weekends of Kansas City-San Diego back-to-back travel action.
Last weekend’s flurry of travel and play unsurprisingly saw San Diego drop three points, although the manner in which it happened was unlikely. First, the Sockers rallied from a second-half three-goal deficit to take a 6-5 lead at Kansas City, only for the Comets to score an equalizer with two seconds remaining in regulation. The match went through golden goal overtime to a shootout, where San Diego prevailed 2-1 in the fourth round, taking the 7-6 victory and two points. Charlie Gonzalez assisted on both of the Sockers’ last two goals and then netted the shootout winner in the fourth round. The next day, following an arduous morning’s travel, a leg-weary Sockers team fell behind 4-2 to Empire, rallying with two goals in the 57th minute to force a 4-4 tie. It looked like a second straight match would see a shootout, but with 28 seconds remaining in golden goal overtime, the Strykers stole a midfield pass and took it down the floor for a goal-wall pass, which was tapped home by Mounir Alami for his second goal of the match and the golden goal game-winner. San Diego earned 1-of-3 standings points for the overtime loss.
Saturday marks the fourth of five meetings between the Stars and the Sockers, and the second-and-final trip up to Washington state. The Sockers are 2-1 against Tacoma, while the Stars are 1-1-1. San Diego shut out Tacoma 8-0 in the initial pairing on December 30 at Frontwave Arena. The Stars answered back with a 5-4 regulation win at ShoWare Center on January 4, a day when San Diego played the night prior and flew to Washington the morning of the match. On February 1, an injury-riddled Sockers team missing twelve players was pushed to overtime by Tacoma before winning 7-6 on Sebastian Mendez’s golden goal. The two clubs will meet a fifth and final time next Friday, February 27 at Frontwave Arena on the Sockers’ annual Star Wars Night. The Sockers lead the all-time modern series 42-6.
The Stars (7-6-1, 20 points) are very much still in the fight for a Ron Newman Cup playoff spot, although the club has faded from a 4-1 start, going 3-5-1 over their past nine matches. Tacoma’s 7-2 at the accesso ShoWare Center, and every single match has been close: the Stars have played seven one-goal games and two two-goal games at home, while they have been blown out on the road by a 16-42 goal differential (-26). Tacoma’s offense ranks last in the MASL with 4.9 goals-per-match. Veteran Jamael “Juice” Cox leads the Stars with (10-7=17) points. Luis Birrueta is 6-5-1 in net with a 5.49 GAA and .695 SV%..