Despite an up-and-down season that has seen it record seven of its 12 wins via the shootout, the expansion Atlanta Ruckus has shown enough to please South African owner Johnny Imerman.
Defensive lapses forced the team to play catch-up all night. Individual efforts kept the game close. The heat was stifling. An opponent’s shot rolled lazily along the goal line as time expired. And the match was narrowly decided in the fifth round of a shootout.
Atlanta Ruckus 3, Vancouver 86ers 2.
Ho hum. Just your typical ride, courtesy of one of the A-League’s newest — and most frustrating — franchises. Despite a star-studded roster, a veteran coach, decent fan support and an enthusiastic owner, the Ruckus enters the final week of the regular season still in danger of missing out on the playoffs.
A 3-2 shootout win in Colorado Sept. 1 wasn’t enough to eliminate the unlucky Foxes (7-15 overall, 1-5 in shootouts) from contention. If Colorado wins in New York Sept. 8, the Ruckus must get at least one point against the Foxes two days — i.e. finish regulation tied — to finish the campaign with at least a one-point advantage.
“It’s been tough,” said defender Greg Sheen. “I know I’ve aged quite a bit this year. It seems our attitude all season has been that when the chips are downs, the guys find a way to come through.”
Normally, that involves — you guessed it — the shootout. Atlanta’s wins over Vancouver and Colorado give it a league-leading seven shootout wins this season, and its only shootout loss came in a 2-1 defeat against New York Aug. 6. But while long on suspense, A-League shootouts count for just two points in the standings, leaving Atlanta, with a 12-11 record, still up against Colorado for the fourth and final playoff spot.
“The things we can practice, like shootouts, is where we’re OK,” said Ruckus coach Lothar Osiander. “We always have little shootout tournaments in practice, and it pays off. It’s good for the goalkeepers and the players. But I can’t take a player and teach him to become a star or a great scorer in 20 games. That takes time.”
But time is something the Ruckus doesn’t have. With both the Olympic Games and Major League Soccer poised to gobble up sponsors, fans and headlines in 1996, the Ruckus has to establish itself as a credible franchise in its very first season. To say Atlanta is a tough market — even the Braves didn’t draw well until after they’d been in the World Series — is an understatement, especially given pro soccer’s repeated failures here.
The fact that owner Johnny Imerman only rescued the Ruckus from insolvency six weeks before the season began made the situation even tougher.
$600,000 loss is acceptable
But Atlanta has averaged approximately 2,700 in attendance and team will lose only around $600,000 in its first season. Such numbers, according to Imerman, are acceptable.
“I think, overall, things have been just about as good as you could expect,” he says. “We always said we’re committed for three years here, and nothing’s changed. We hope to break even in 1996, and we expect to show a profit the year after that. But overall we’re pleased. I wish the team had done better, but that’s a human situation you can’t control.”
Nonetheless, Imerman’s strict financial limits — while keeping costs down —
may actually have hurt the club, which began to lag in midseason. Beginning July 2, the Ruckus lost six of seven — including an embarrassing defeat in the U.S. Open Cup to the eventual champion Richmond Kickers of the USISL — leaving the team beat up and exhausted.
Imerman refused to go after high-priced free agents for help, and a proposed loan deal for U.S. midfielder Dominic Kinnear fell through. In the end, English veteran Justin Fashanu was signed on Aug. 10 to add punch, but it may have been too little, too late.
“You need a good reserve, a stable of players,” said defender John Doyle. “When all the other teams were adding three or four players, we were still using the same team we started the season with.”
An experienced playmaker, according to Osiander, remains the biggest need.
“Somebody who can dictate a game,” Osiander says. “[Michael] Araujo is very good at going forward and Greg [Sheen] is very good defensively, but neither of them dictates the flow of the game. That’s where we’ve been hurt all season.”
Fashanu, meanwhile, solved Atlanta’s need for a big, strong target player. Although, idle for more than a year after playing with Hearts of the Scottish Premier Division in 1994, Fashanu scored in his first game to lead the Ruckus past Seattle 2-1 and figures to take the offensive pressure off leading scorers Lenin Steenkamp (eight goals) and Staale Soebye (seven).
“I’m having fun” Fashanu said. “For me, everything right now is a bonus. I was debating whether I’d keep playing after Scotland, but I’m fit and strong and very, very enthusiastic.”
If Atlanta’s first season is judged a success, whither the future? Osiander admits he has been contacted about coaching in MLS, while several of the top players privately hope to sign with the new league. Imerman, meanwhile, has listened to pitches from both MLS and the USISL, yet insists the club’s immediate future remains with the A-League.
“For me, it’s the best option,” he said. “But we need to expand as a league to eight teams but no more than 12 by next year, and we need to develop regionally, into eastern and western divisions, in order to cut down on travel costs. That’s what’s killing us.
“As for the players and the coaches, I hope we don’t lose them. Lothar is a very, very vital part of our future, and we have most of our players under 18-month contracts. But this is a business. And if we can sell our players for a lot of money … well, that’s good business.”
by Soccer America correspondent Doug Cress