Mark Lukas is 100 percent positive that you can’t stop his soccer team from scoring.

But before you step in front of the net to get embarrassed you should probably know that his team consists of two Border Collies.

Lukas, of Orange County California, has successfully trained his dogs, Ms. Z and Bek, to perform on the soccer field. They put on shows at schools, fairs and parties and next weekend they’ll be present at Soccer Nation Expo Feb. 21-22 in Los Angeles.

TopDrawerSoccer.com got a chance to chat with Lukas about his unique footballers.


So how difficult was it to train these dogs?
Well because they’re working Border Collies, which are sheepherders, they have a discipline and mentality unlike other dogs. I basically just replaced the sheep with a soccer ball.

Would training other breeds be successful?
There’s a lot of dogs out there that play soccer. I think these are probably the best soccer dogs in the world. They always win agility contests and they’re the smartest in the world. I’ve seen other dogs play, but not with the skill of these. Ms. Z will maneuver the ball to her shoulder, put it three or four feet in front of you and fire it the other way.

What kind of players are your dogs?
They’re really very different, and actually they have a lot of parallels between men and women. Ms. Z always wants to be in control, whereas the male (Bek) just wants to play hard. Ms. Z actually has a good understanding of the game. She’ll trap the ball and run to it like it’s prey and take it anywhere. She plays very conservatively when it comes to expending her energy, whereas the male doesn’t care. He just runs around and wastes his.

How long have they been playing?
From the beginning. The oldest one is five, and she’s been playing just as long and she’s been alive. They started pushing the ball around at 12 weeks, and once they learned they would want to play every time I would come into their presence.

So really Mark, how hard is it to stop one of your dogs from scoring?
What we usually do is place four people in front of goals and let them try to save the shots. I’ll tell you this, we had (Chivas USA goalie) Dan Kennedy try to stop them once. He did decent against them, but he really had to make an effort to stop them – and it was only on a 6x12 foot goal. The one thing is you can’t use power against them. They don’t tend to be aggressive, so only if they feel comfortable they’ll be assertive. You can trash talk them a little bit, and it actually seems to work; it fires them up. But they’re just so fast. No human can compete with their reflexes. You will not beat them.