Columnist Ron Kantowski: Yes, Vegas does have pro soccer

By Ron Kantowski

Friday, April 22, 2005 | 10:14 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.

A look at the National Premier Soccer League:

The first clue that the Las Vegas Strikers of the National Premier Soccer League aren't exactly the biggest thing since the corner kick is that the home telephone number of the head coach is listed next to his name on the team's Web site.

Too bad the Internet wasn't around when Herman Franks was managing the Cubs.

In that the Strikers have quietly started their second season, they may be the best-kept secret since Colonel Sanders started mixing herbs and spices to make the Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's why the coach's telephone number is listed on the Web site. Dial it, and he'll gladly tell you why you should spend $5 to watch the Strikers open their home season against the Salinas Samba at the Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex tonight at 7.

"You could say if this was baseball, it wouldn't be Triple-A (caliber)," said Strikers coach Victor Arbelaez, who has guided the Bishop Gorman boys and girls to umpteen state soccer championships after his playing days with the short-lived Las Vegas Quicksilvers of the North American Soccer League. "It would be more like Double-A or Single-A."

But at least it's soccer, and Arbelaez wants Las Vegas' closet soccer fans -- you know who you are -- and especially our city's ever-growing Hispanic population, which was practically raised on The Beautiful Game, as the great Pele called it, to know the Strikers are perfectly capable of providing a futbol fix.

"If we can get everybody to play, we can be pretty good," said Arbelaez, a native Colombian who was pretty good himself, having played against Pele five times during his professional career.

When he says getting everybody to play, what Arbelaez basically means is getting everybody to the games. When the players are basically playing for the cheers of the crowd, that's easier said than done. There are no player contracts in the NPSL, which probably explains why the league has lasted for three seasons.

"They don't get paid to play, they do it because they love to play, but it's hard because a lot of them have families and they have to put food on the table," said Arbelaez of his ever-fluctuating roster, comprised mostly of local players, including several from UNLV. "We go through a lot of players, so it's tough."

All of the Strikers' operating expenses come out of the pockets of their owners who, like everybody else associated with the team, are wild and crazy soccer enthusiasts. Frederic Apcar is a local attorney who played for Arbelaez at Bishop Gorman. Steve Lazarus is a senior vice president for Global Cash Access, a firm that supplies ATM machines to casinos, who played college soccer at Cal State Northridge.

Lazarus said the idea behind the Strikers is to make the team/franchise self-sustaining. The best way to do that is the same way every other sports entity around here tries to do it and ultimately seems to fail: Ticket sales and concessions.

He believes with a modest overhead, the Strikers eventually can put a little cash in the coffee can. "If I didn't have that belief," he says, "it would get old supporting it with my paycheck."

But the overhead is modest. For instance, when Phillip Detmer, last year's captain, blew out his knee in an off-season match, the team principals just made him the "director of marketing" -- a job, I might add, at which he's better than most of the pros who do it in this town, judging from the number of Strikers' e-mails sitting in my "in" box.

"I told him to keep it to two a week," Lazarus said sheepishly.

There's nothing semi-professional about the look of the team's Web site, and local fans also may be surprised by the quality of play. Last year, one of the Strikers' mainstays was Boomer Arbalaez, Victor's son, who is now playing for Chivas USA of Major League Soccer. One of the Strikers' goalies is Emmet Meilbrecht, who played that position for the city's last professional soccer team, the Dustdevils of the Continental Indoor Soccer League.

The Strikers are off to a middling start, having earned a point in a 1-1 draw against the Sonoma County Sol in last Friday's season opener before losing 4-0 to the Chico Rooks the next night.

Chico Rooks? Wasn't he a utility infielder for the Reds?

No doubt about it, the sides in the NPSL will never be confused with Manchester United or Real Madrid. But it's soccer, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, and outside of those televised games from England down at the Crown & Anchor Pub, it's about all we've got.