Men Booters Succumb to Columbia, Dropping Closely Fought 3-1 Decision

The ghost of last year's 6-7-1 squad came back to haunt the Harvard men's soccer team Saturday, as the nationally-ranked Columbia Lions took an early 2-0 lead and then hung on to post a 3-1 Ivy Leaque win.

The ghost that presided over the wind-swept Business School field was a ghost of offenses past, or rather, the ghost of a no-offense past, with the booters playing the Lions evenly or even dominating at midfield, but failing to capitalize on several excellent scoring opportunities.

Columbia took charge of the score, if not the game, in the early going, taking advantage of a Crimson defensive lapse to hit the twines just 39 seconds into the game.

Harvard goalie Ben Erulcar saw it coming, he saw the Columbia forwards criss-cross in front of him, he saw the breakdown in communication among the Crimson backfielders which left Columbia freshman Steve Sirtis wide open on the left side of the net.

Can't Always Save What You Want

But there really wasn't much he could do as Sirtis received a pass from teammate Greg Varney let loose a shot up high on the far post, making the score 1-0.

Harvard opened the game with its usual 4-4-2 alignment, which gives the Crimson more men and, theoretically, increased effectiveness in the defensive zone. Based on that line-up, Crimson coach George Ford's game plan, as he explained it, was to "go out and let them come to us."

"If you're playing a team that's supposed to be one of the best in the country," he added, "you put the cards down and say, 'well, let's see how good you are.'"

But as it turned out, the Lions, who finished fourth in the NCAA's last year, proved slightly better than the Crimson cared to discover.

If the first Columbia tally can be explained away as a mistake, the second was little short of perfection. It, in fact, was the only one of the three Columbia goals for which either Ford or Erulcar chose to give genuine credit to their New York guests.

What actually transpired was a quick, nicely-controlled Lion drive down the right wing, followed by a Steve Pratten cross to 6-ft. 4-in. freshman, Amer Aly, who simply out-towered Crimson midfielder Leo Lanzillo to head the ball past Erulcar for the second bit of Columbian gold.

"There were two great offensive opportunities in the game," said Ford, "and we scored one and they scored one. The other two goals were just breakdowns."

The Harvard opportunity, which came when the score was already 3-0, wasn't the result of any sort of Columbia defensive breakdown. Down 2-0 at the half, Ford pulled out all the stops, instituting a 4-2-4 to add offensive firepower.

"When you're two goals down," Ford asked rhetorically, "what's the use of playing defensive soccer?"

The line-up, which puts more players in the front zone, had an immediate effect of increased pressure on the Lion net.

The shored-up offensive striking capacity paid off with a Mauro Keller-Sarmiento-to-Michael Smith picture play at 24:47 in the second stanza. Keller-Sarmiento, at left wing, drove a pass from the right corner across the crease, and Smith, in perfect position about ten yards out, headed the ball into the right side of the goal.

That Harvard bingo was mainly significant for the questions that it raised about the Crimson offense. Following the third Columbia tally--a Giovanni Vitale effort just 43 seconds into the second half--Harvard's offense apparently began to gel. The Keller-Sarmiento brothers, Mauro and Andreas, brought the ball down skillfully into the corners. The other forwards, Lance Ayrault and Richard Berkman, set up nicely down in front.

But when the cross passes came from the wings, and they did come, at one stretch three in a row, more often than not there was no Harvard player able to get a header off toward the goal.