Branko Segota: “Steve was scoring with every part of his body. He was always in position. He loved to score. It didn’t matter. He would dive in there just to score the goal. He had a huge heart to be the top scorer. He just enjoyed that.” (Photo by Deborah M. Bernstein)
By Michael Lewis
FrontRowSoccer.com Editor
Sometime during the 1970s, Hajduk Split and a certain charismatic striker named Slavia Zungul went on a North American tour that a certain future soccer played would never forget.
“He was a big star with Hajduk Split,” Branko Segota said. “They came to Toronto and my dad went to see him play and I saw him there.
“They did the tours, like the Cosmos used to do. It was a big following in Toronto at that time. I guess they got everything paid to go to play the games and make them more visible.”
Little did a teenage Segota realize that he would wind up teaming up with the prolific forward, better known as Steve Zungul to the American soccer public, and wind up as one of the most lethal dynamic duos in the 45-year history sport, on the New York Arrows.
“It was awesome,” Segota told this writer several years ago. “A big player like that and you get a big opportunity to learn, just be around him. It was great.”
It was great for so many reasons.
Segota became a pretty damn good soccer player, a dangerous forward with a booming shot, in a career that spanned a remarkable 20 years. That included a appearance for Canada at the 1986 World Cup and an induction into Canadian Soccer Association Hall of Fame and the Rochester Lancers Wall of Fame, among his many accolades.
Zungul, nicknamed the Lord of All Indoors by a Sports Illustrated writer, set indoor standards that likely will never be equaled or broken while making life miserable for opposing defenders and goalkeepers in the MISL and North American Soccer League.
By the time he retired at 35 after the 1989-90 season, Zungul had written the MISL record book. He finished with 652 goals, almost 200 more than the second leading goal scorer, who just happened to be Segota (463). He also had the most assists (1,123).
Zungul’s goals were measured in quantity and quality. He once hammered in seven in a match and scored three goals in 37 seconds. He connected for a stunning 108 goals in 40 games one season. With the 1980-81 championship on the line, Zungul tallied the game-winner in sudden death overtime against the host and arch-rival St Louis Steamers.
Some 33 years after retiring from the game in 1990, Zungul will be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. Given his reticence since then, it would not be surprising if he is a no-show during induction ceremonies in Frisco, Texas on Saturday afternoon.
“He kind of doesn’t like that stuff these days,” Segota said.
If he doesn’t show up, that would be a rare loss for all of us because the legendary striker’s induction speech could have been some interesting tales from way back in the day.
Zungul, who joined the Arrows at the prime of his career (24) was forced to wait five years before he could show the U.S. soccer community how lethal he was outdoors. Instead, he “settled” for the indoor game.
There are some forwards who have trouble adapting to play with a roof over their heads and boards on the side. Zungul embraced it and excelled while beyond most mortal soccer players. He led the Arrows to the MISL’s first four championships, while adding four more with the San Diego Sockers.
“He was a huge talent,” Segota said. “He had a nose for the goal. If you followed his career you would know Steve was scoring with every part of his body. He was always in position. He loved to score. It didn’t matter. He would dive in there just to score the goal. He had a huge heart to be the top scorer. He just enjoyed that.”
Segota had the opportunity to play with the Lord on the Arrows at the beginning of his career and with him on the Sockers during his prime years.
During the MISL’s inaugural 1978-79 season, Arrows head coach Don Popovic paired a 17-year-old Segota with the wily veteran on the same forward line.
“Pop put me him and on the same line all the time because I was up and coming and I was very strong and fast, and I had a good shot,” Segota said. “But I still was a bit not experienced and a little wild. Him and Pop took me under their wing and calmed me down a little bit to choose my decisions for shooting and passing. Together we molded [together]. That’s why later we were so successful. We didn’t have to look where one or the other was going to be. we automatically knew where to be or position ourselves to receive [the ball] or to score a goal.”
They were difficult to stop. If Zungul wasn’t scoring a goal, then his young “apprentice” would do the damage.
“I think eventually everybody was on board with that on what he did with his production in the first two, three years of the league,” Segota said. “To score all those 100 goals in one season and [almost] 150 points, he was just magic.”
By making the ball disappear past the opposing keeper.
Heck, they got to know each other so well that Segota and Zungul could have played with their eyes closed. They also performed for two years together with the Golden Bay Earthquakes in the NASL.
“At times I didn’t see him, and I would play the ball and he would be there,” Segota said. “He knew as well. He knew I was going to come so he would hold it until I outran the guy, and he would just slip the ball or if the guy left him, he would just score. It was so perfect.
“The understanding he and I had probably wouldn’t happen again for a long time.”
Let’s face it. The Arrows were a special team in those days, winning those four MISL championships. Those teams were stacked with stars.
Segota rolled off several names: Shep Messing, David D’Errico, Julie Vee, Luis Alberto, Renato Cila, Laszlo Harsanyi, and Val Tuksa, among others.
“These were all big players, and they went on to do really big things in soccer,” he added. “They were huge players even when they left the Arrows. So can you imagine that you have all these players on one team. It was something like later with the Sockers because all of those players are from the Arrows, including Zoltan Toth. Six of us were from the Arrows and we did the same thing in San Diego.”
Age and lingering injuries finally caught up to Zungul – he needed to have a hip replaced after retiring. Zungul, though, still could produce some magic, making the ball disappear into the net in overtime for the Sockers in the 1989-90 championship playoff series at the Baltimore Blast.
Zungul ran a ball down in the left corner as goalkeeper Scott Manning came out to challenge him.
“He touched the ball into the corner, and it was like an impossible angle,” Segota said. “It rolled down from his knee down to his foot and it went into the goal, empty net, and we won the game, and everybody ran onto the field. The funny thing is the next time we went there, in the warm-up, we all tried to duplicate that shot and nobody could do it. It was just something unbelievable that happens instantaneously.”
And probably happens just once in a lifetime.
Which only the Lord of All Indoors could pull off.
