Schmid undeterred by lofty task ahead
Coach believes Seattle Sounders FC can reach playoffs in inaugural season
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After years in the MLS wilderness and finally leading the Columbus Crew to the MLS Cup championship, Sigi Schmid decided to jump ship and start anew with an expansion team.
And not many MLS coaches have left a team under their own volition -- Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley are two who come to mind, having left their respective clubs to become manager of the U.S. national team.
But no one has ever left a team after winning the league title until Schmid did to helm Seattle Sounders FC.
"The best way I can put it its like you've been living in an apartment and you build a house and you have your house all finished and you move in," Schmid said. "And after a month you decide that you're going to go and live in an apartment and build another house. It doesn't make a lot of sense a lot of times. But it's what happens and you move forward with it."
The Sounders will move forward on Thursday when they play host to the New York Red Bulls in the team's inaugural game, at Qwest Field at 9 p.m. ET (ESPN2, Deportes).
For his entire career, Schmid has rebuilt and reloaded teams. This is the first time he has built one from scratch.
"Its definitely going to be a very challenging situation," he said. "Being an expansion team is different than taking over a team that hasn't done well because when you're in that situation, you're getting rid of pieces and trying to add pieces. At least in an expansion team, you're more about adding pieces than trying to get rid of pieces. So from that standpoint, it's a little bit easier. It's like building a house on a lot that already has been cleared vs. trying to do an addition to a house that's somewhat standing but you're not sure if you like the structure."
Sounders FC probably could not have found a better person to build the team from scratch.
The guy is a winner.
For the uninformed, Schmid guided UCLA to three NCAA Division I championships.
When he moved to the professional ranks, he guided the Los Angeles Galaxy to their first MLS Cup crown in 2002, besting the New England Revolution on the latter's home field and 62,000 or so partisan supporters, no mean feat.
He is the only MLS coach to win MLS titles with two teams. And, he won MLS Coach of the Year honors in 2008.
Not too shabby.
When you're an expansion team, success isn't necessarily defined on whether you win it all. What the Chicago Fire managed to achieve in its first season -- capturing the MLS Cup -- is an aberration and is a feat that most likely won't be repeated.
So, Schmid's goals are within reach.
"In our league you're always talking about playoffs when you talk about successful or not successful," he said. "So getting into the playoffs definitely would be a marker in that direction. I think for me that describes success for the first year. It's to be in that hunt through game No. 30. Making the playoffs would make a very successful season the first year. Not making the playoffs and having been in the hunt makes it OK. But not being in the hunt at all makes it disappointing.
"Our goal is to make the playoffs. We've got to be really realistic. I don't think we're going to walk away and win the Supporters' Shield because we are starting out. But our goal is to make the playoffs. If that's as team No. 8, then we're happy to be in the playoffs as team No. 8."
Schmid, who turns 56 on Friday, has had plenty of recent expansion teams to learn from, including Chivas USA (2005), Real Salt Lake (2005), Toronto FC (2007) and San Jose Earthquakes (2008). None of those teams reached the playoffs.
"You always learn from situations," he said. "I've talked to various coaches at different times. Not in particular about 'OK, if you had to expansion what would you do different?' You listen and you keep your ears and eyes open and you see what they've done. You have a feeling for what they think went well and what they think didn't go well.
"The toughest part with expansion is getting that good mix. You can't misfire. It's tough enough in MLS where you can't make many mistakes, which is always the big difference between MLS and Europe. Not with an expansion team, with the expansion draft and the players you pick have to do fairly well. Out of those 10 guys you've got to have at least six or so that become meaningful contributors to your team. Then with the foreign players you bring in, you've got to bat a real good percentage. You hope that 60-75 percent of those players are hits for you as well. And you've got to hope in the draft you come out with another two or three good players.
"Now you've got 13-14 players you can sort of build around and stay injury free and get lucky on another one or two and then you're there."
Of the six previous expansion teams, only two made the playoffs -- the Fire, who won the whole thing in 1998, and the Miami Fusion, who were eliminated in the first round.
The Fire's achievement will be difficult to duplicate.
"Chicago did a tremendous job that year," Schmid said. "The league is at a different place and a different time now because obviously 10 years has passed since then. It is more of a difficult assignment. That takes nothing away of what Chicago did. What worked for Chicago is that they ended up having a great foreign pool of players. They hit it with [Peter] Nowak, Lubos Kubik, Roman Kosecki and Jerzy Podbrozny. They got lucky with a guy like [Ante] Razov, who had been discarded from two teams. They did a good job on the expansion draft with guys like C.J. Brown, being able to pick up Chris Armas in that trade. All those things together. They got the expansion draft fairly right. They had a great selection of players. They got lucky on one or two guys as well. That carried them through. What they did was tremendous. If that can be duplicated, today, it's going to be very difficult."
Ironically, the first opponent for Schmid and the Sounders are the Red Bulls, whom his Crew defeated in the MLS Cup Final on Nov. 23. That did not escape Schmid.
"I have a lot of respect for Juan Carlos [Osorio]," he said of the Red Bulls coach. "It's going to be a great challenge. I just hope the result ends up the same the last time I played the Red Bulls. We're going to have to work really hard in order to get to that point."
As much as Schmid would love a victory in front of a soccer capacity crowd Thursday, he said "I'll trade that for being in the playoffs. Obviously starting well helps us. It helps our confidence. We also want to end well."
How they fared:
Here's how the six previous MLS expansion teams have done in their first season:
Michael Lewis covers soccer for the New York Daily News and is editor of BigAppleSoccer.com. He can be reached at SoccerWriter516@aol.com. Views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
