Borja Paces East’s Win in MSL All-Star Game

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —  For the first time in All-Star or championship series play, Baltimore Coach Kenny Cooper shook hands with his nemesis, Socker Coach Ron Newman, as the victor when the MSL East All-Stars claimed a 9-8 victory over the West 25 seconds into overtime.

But this one wasn’t a coaches’ battle. This one belonged to the players, as the score might indicate. It was the second-highest scoring MSL All-Star game in 14 years.

Chico Borja of the Wichita Wings kicked in the winning goal. It capped a three-goal, two-assist performance for Borja.

“Not to take anything away from Coach Newman and Coach Cooper,” Borja said, “but we wanted to give a great show. They wanted a 3-2 game. We wanted a 9-8 game.”

And that’s what they got.

Borja, selected the game’s MVP, tied the MSL All-Star record of five points set by Memphis’ Stan Stamenkovic in the 1983 game at Kemper.

In fact, he had a hand in the East’s last three goals. Borja tied the score 7-7 midway through the fourth quarter and assisted on a sixth-attacker goal by Dale Mitchell with 2:47 left in regulation that made it game 8-8.

“Once we got to overtime, I thought it would end quickly because of the kind of players that were on the field,” Mitchell said. “It was just a matter of who would get the last shot.”

The shot belonged to Borja, who blew downfield at the top of a three-on-two break. Borja took a pass from Cleveland’s Zoran Karic and his fake put Tacoma goalkeeper Cris Vaccaro down on the floor before he tapped in the game-winner, much to the delight of the crowd of 13,720.

“Zoran took the ball to the middle and created it,” Borja said. “Two defenders came in, and it left us open to the outside.

“I knew Vaccaro would go for the shot. I faked it, dribbled, and shot and the rest is history.”

Five Sockers played for the West.

Goalkeeper Victor Nogueira made nine saves and allowed three goals in the first half, and defender Kevin Crow and forward Waad Hirmez each scored a goal. It was Crow’s first point in seven All-Star games.

Forward Paul Wright and midfielder Brian Quinn also played.

The East led 3-2 at halftime on Borja’s first goal, a header of a pass from Kansas City’s Iain Fraser. It could have been worse for the West, but Nogueira, who had nine saves in the half, came up big on point-blank shots by Cleveland’s Hector Marinaro and Karic.

So Newman lit into his team at the intermission.

“We had a bad first half, and I thought I had to get on their case,” Newman said. “I wasn’t rousing them, but we needed to pick it up a little bit in the second half.”

Vaccaro replaced Nogueira in the second half, and the East, using precision passing, put its first shot past him when Kansas City’s Carl Valentine scored 3:22 into the quarter.

Then, the third period turned into a goal-a-thon as the teams combined for five goals in a span of 3:49. In all, the six goals in the third period tied an All-Star record, accomplished on three other occasions.

Baltimore goalkeeper Scott Manning tied an All-Star record by allowing six goals in a half, but he kept his team in the game with fourth quarter saves on Tatu, Preki and Fernando Clavijo--who tied an All-Star record with four assists.

MSL All-Star Notes

The winning share for the all-star game was $1,000 per man, with the losers receiving $800 each. . . . The MVP will receive two round-trip tickets to wherever USAir flies. . . . The 1992 All-Star Game will be played in Baltimore. . . . Newman and Cooper haved faced each other in two previous All-Star Games, in 1990 and 1986. They have also faced each other in four championship series (1983, 85, 89 and 90). Newman prevailed in all six.