Getting Kicks Out of His Game : Free Spirit Ian Feuer Refines Soccer Skills With Salsa, Dreams of Playing for U.S. National Team

As the winger streaks along the right sideline of the soccer field, Ian Feuer sneaks behind a defender a few yards in front of the enemy goal and waits for the play to develop.

The wait is short.

A crossing pass from the winger lands at Feuer’s feet, which are pointing away from the goal, but he still manages to get off an improvisational heel kick that catches the goalkeeper napping and increases the blue team’s lead over the white team during an L.A. Salsa intrasquad scrimmage at Cal State Fullerton.

Feuer smiles and waves and blows kisses to an imaginary crowd in the empty stadium. The workout is strenuous under the punishing morning sun that filters through the smog-filled air, but Feuer won’t be dissuaded.

“It’s just part of having fun,” said Feuer, a former player at Canoga Park High. “Everybody plays the best when we are having fun.”

The real funny part is that Feuer doesn’t have any business scoring goals. In practice sessions or otherwise. His job, actually, is to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

At 6 feet 6, Feuer is a former U.S. Olympic team member and now the first-string goalkeeper for the Salsa, an expansion franchise in the American Professional Soccer League that began play last season after a merger by the American Soccer League and the Western Soccer League. The APSL features seven teams that play 24 matches each, with the playoffs and championship game scheduled for September.

Going into Friday’s match at Ft. Lauderdale, the Salsa is in third place with a 5-2 record and 41 points. And Feuer is one of the main reasons for the team’s good fortune. He has a 1.64 goals-against average, fifth-best in the league, and has played every minute this season.

His performance includes an opening-date, 5-0 shutout over Toronto at home on May 1, and an 89% success ratio in shootouts, giving up only one goal in nine attempts.

But integrating Feuer into scrimmages at other positions is the idea of Coach Rildo Menezes, a former member of the powerful Brazilian national team, who wants his goalkeeper to refine his footwork.

In fact, it’s a necessity, since soccer rules now allow goalkeepers to touch with their hands only balls kicked or headed by opponents, or unintentionally kicked to them by a teammate.

“It gives the goalie confidence to play like a sweeper,” said Menezes, who played with the legendary Pele on the New York Cosmos of the old North American Soccer League. “The goalies need to have good ball control.”

Feuer, 22, showcased his remarkable reflexes after a recent practice during a drill with a couple of teammates. A wooden board about the size of a folded Ping-Pong table was placed about 10 yards from the goal, and Feuer stood inches in front of the crossbar and tried to stop the blind shots rocketing over the board. Many got through, but he still made some outstanding saves.

“He’s very quick on the ball,” Menezes said. “I think he has a lot of potential. I think in a couple of years he could play for the (U.S.) national team.”

Feuer is no stranger to high-caliber competition. He is already a veteran of the Belgian first division and an Olympic tournament, hastening his development.

After discovering soccer and playing in youth leagues in his native Las Vegas, Feuer moved with his parents to Canoga Park when he was 15. His father, Ron, a keyboard player who performed with Paul Anka, Diana Ross and yes, even Elvis, and his mother, Rusty, an actors’ agent, wanted to be closer to Hollywood.

Their son, however, wanted to be closer to first-rate soccer. He played at Canoga Park only one season, his sophomore year in 1986, but wasn’t impressed with what he saw.

“High school soccer was kind of a joke,” said Feuer, who stood 6-4 and liked basketball but didn’t try out for the team at Canoga Park. “I was just playing (soccer) to play.”

Feuer went searching for a stiffer challenge and found one with Autobahn, a semipro club in the Valley that was coached by Menezes. That was the first time the two met.

Menezes told Feuer he couldn’t play in matches because he was too young, but allowed him to practice with the team.

“After four or five weeks, he disappeared,” Menezes recalled. “About two years later, I got a letter from him from Belgium. He said he had made a pro team there.”

The groundwork for a move to Belgium had been laid a few years before, Feuer said.

“My youth team from Vegas went to a tournament there and the family I stayed with had connections with FC Brugge, probably the top team in Belgium,” he said.

A few pulled strings combined with his ability landed Feuer with Brugge in 1988, where he was the No. 2 goalkeeper. In 1992, he was loaned for 45 matches to RWD Molenbeek, another club in the first division.

It turned out to be his farewell tour. According to Feuer, Brugge officials were angered by comments he made while with Molenbeek and blackballed him.

“What happened was that people wanted to know why Brugge let me go,” Feuer said. “I told them I didn’t think (Brugge) believed in me, in my skills. So I think Brugge took the comments wrong and tried to sweep them under the rug. They don’t take criticism there very well. Molenbeek wanted to re-sign me but Brugge wouldn’t let me go. I couldn’t even get a game with the Brugge reserves.”

Although he had a contract with Brugge, Feuer wasn’t getting a dime from the club. Worse, the club still owned his rights and wouldn’t relinquish them. Not until the Salsa jumped into the equation, that is.

Rick Davis, a 10-year captain of the U.S. national team and now the Salsa general manager, asked FIFA, the sport’s worldwide governing body, to intervene. He got swift action.

“We established that the team was no longer paying him and we got a ruling from FIFA to free (his contract) to us,” Davis said. “We had heard a lot of good things about Ian through a number of contacts in our scouting network.”

What started as a great European adventure for a young American goalkeeper turned sour, but Feuer didn’t leave empty-handed. He returned home with his Belgian fiancee, Trui, and the two live with his parents in Northridge. They plan to get married, he said, in about a year.

In the meantime, Feuer wants to help the Salsa win the APSL title and perhaps raise enough eyebrows to get a shot at the U.S. national team that will participate in the 1994 World Cup.

As the backup goalkeeper on the U.S. Olympic team in Barcelona last year, Feuer got a taste of international competition even though he didn’t play in any of the three U.S. matches.

Of course, the competition level between Olympic and national teams sometimes can be dramatic, but Feuer would like to step up another notch.

“That’s my goal,” Feuer said. “I think if I get a chance, I can surprise a few people.”

Or at least, show them how to have fun.