Armchair Analyst: My memories of legendary MLS head coach Sigi Schmid
By Matthew Doyle, mlssoccer.com
There will be other, better remembrances of Sigi Schmid by folks who knew him longer and more thoroughly than I ever did. They will come from players who played for him, coaches who learned their trade from him, colleagues and foes, comrades in arms in building this unique and multi-cultural soccer nation of ours.
Sigi Schmid, an immigrant, came to the US and helped build the game here. He played college soccer, and then he coached college soccer. And he was an assistant with the USMNT, and the head coach of the US U-20s, and the head coach at three separate MLS clubs, and he won – a lot – wherever he went. On a grand, decades-long scale, he left things in much, much better condition than he found them in. He took things that were broken and, multiple times, fixed them. And then he held up a trophy.
Sigi Schmid, the soccer coach, was the first in MLS history to win the MLS Cup/Supporters' Shield double at two different clubs. He did it in 2002 with the LA Galaxy, then did it again six years later with Columbus Crew SC. He will always be the first to have done that. There will be other, better remembrances of those teams by the players who played for them, the men and women who covered them, or who cheered for them, who sang for them until they were hoarse.
There are two particular moments about Sigi that I really want to recount here, though.
The first came way back on June 11, 2005. I remember the date because that's the day the US U-20s, coached by Schmid, played the Argentine U-20s. It doesn't matter who the Argentine U-20s were coached by; what matters is that they were led by a playmaker named Lionel Messi, and... I mean, everybody knew. Yes, Argentina were loaded, but what mattered was not letting Messi drop five on you.
Sigi was a well-respected coach (despite having been fired by the Galaxy the previous year... while the team was still in first place), but not known as a tinkerer. He didn't hit you with wrinkles. Rather, he put his team out in their best shape, with their best players, and said "go ahead and see if you can beat us."
That day, he threw out a wrinkle: He had the relatively unknown playmaker he'd discovered via his contacts at UCLA – a kid by the name of Benny Feilhaber – play a purely man-marking, defensive role. Feilhaber's job wasn't to get on the ball, or protect a given zone; rather, it was to make Messi's life entirely miserable.
And that's what he did, staying on Messi's hip the entire second half. Schmid's gambit kept the greatest player our sport has ever seen out of the game, which the US won 1-0. They'd go on to draw Germany 0-0, then beat Egypt 1-0 before getting dunked on by Graziano Pelle and Italy by 3-1 in the Round of 16. It was an entirely respectable showing.
That US team was really good, but they had no business coming out on top against that version of Argentina, one that won every other game they played in that tournament. Messi took the field seven times that month, and either scored or assisted in six of them. Only the US kept him off the board.
It's still maybe the best single-game wrinkle I've ever seen a US coach throw out there, at any level.
The second really indelible memory I have of Schmid is more recent, coming just over two years ago. In the months after he'd been dismissed by the Seattle Sounders, Schmid came to work with us at MLSsoccer.com in the studio, doing long shows for Decision Day and the playoffs. This is where I really got to know him as a warm, generous and fun guy to be around. I've been around a lot of professional coaches and athletes, and there are few I'd describe as "light-hearted." Sigi was – or at least, could be for long stretches of time.
That's not the part, though. The part is this: I watched that year's MLS Cup with Sigi. The 2016 MLS Cup. The one the Sounders won just months after he was let go as head coach.
I was there with him, watching as Roman Torres banged in the decisive penalty, and looked over to see the strangest look of both agony and ecstasy on Sigi's face. Ecstasy because this was the club he'd built, for their MLS years. Seattle was where he'd lived for a decade. His son still worked for the team. This was the club guided by his friend Brian Schmetzer, who'd known Sigi for decades and been his right-hand man for nearly 10 years. These were the players he'd drafted and signed and recruited and managed.
Agony because, as he looked at the fans... "*&%#," Schmid said, and then again. There was unmistakeable redness rimming his eyes. "I wanted to give this to them. I wanted to give this to them so bad."
Sigi Schmid is gone now, and may he rest in peace. The things he gave us – all of us in MLS, and in US soccer – will last lifetimes.
Sigi Schmid, Sounders’ first MLS coach, dies at 65
By Geoff Baker, Seattle Times
Even before stars like Fredy Montero, Kasey Keller, Clint Dempsey and Stefan Frei put the Sounders on the Major League Soccer map, the team’s defining acquisition had been a German-born head coach with a penchant for winning games.
Siegfried (Sigi) Schmid, who died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 65, had just guided the Columbus Crew to the 2008 MLS Cup championship when the Sounders proceeded to poach him as their own. It wasn’t easy; the Crew filed tampering charges and claimed a vaguely worded noncompete clause prevented Schmid from moving anywhere.
But a subsequent MLS investigation cleared the team of tampering and the Sounders paid the Crew a financial settlement on the noncompete clause to allow the two-time MLS Cup winner and Coach of the Year to join the Emerald City’s fledgling expansion franchise. The initial headaches ultimately proved worth it — the Schmid-led Sounders becoming a template for MLS franchises and expansion squads everywhere by making the playoffs in each of seven consecutive seasons.
“From the moment we hired Sigi, I knew it was the right decision and that he was the right man for this particular club,’’ owner Adrian Hanauer said last year. “I feel that even more strongly today.’’
Schmid would go on to post the most wins of any MLS coach — 266 in the regular season and playoffs combined.
“Our family is deeply saddened by his passing and is taking this time to grieve the loss of a tremendous husband, father, leader and mentor,” Schmid’s family said in a statement. “We also recognize how much Sigi meant to so many people across the U.S. Soccer landscape and around the world at different levels of the game. That community meant a great deal to him as well, and for that reason, it was important to us that we share the news of his passing.
“While we mourn his loss, we appreciate privacy during this challenging time and will not be issuing further statements.”
Schmid’s family said he died of a “personal health matter.” The Los Angeles Times reports he spent three weeks at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in need of a heart transplant.
“Today’s news comes as a shock and a devastating blow to our entire community across MLS and U.S. Soccer,” Hanauer said Wednesday in a statement. “Sigi was someone I respected immensely, not only for his success as a coach and dedication to his craft, but more importantly as a man and someone that truly left a positive mark on the people he encountered every day.
“He will be missed greatly by a lot of people, and on behalf of the soccer community here in Seattle, I can say that we would not be where we are now without him.”
Schmid was more than just a bench boss in Seattle; he was the legitimacy and credibility needed by the new franchise to attract quality players that would convince fans to buy tickets.
One of the players most impressed by Schmid was midfielder Brad Evans, who’d played for him on the 2008 champion Columbus squad. Just days after that victory, with Evans still making his way home, he learned that Seattle had selected him in that year’s expansion draft.
A few weeks later, Evans got a call from Schmid, who’d finally been allowed to join the new team. Evans relayed the conversation for the book “100 Things Sounders Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die.”
“He told me, ‘We’ve already got 5,000 season tickets sold,’’’ Evans said. “He told me, ‘We’re doing something special up here, the ownership is second to none and the GM is willing to do whatever it takes to get this team off the ground and running.’’’
Schmid’s reassurances helped ease the uncertainty Evans had about an unknown Seattle commodity. Evans would go on to become one of the most memorable players in Sounders history, eventually becoming their captain and a member of the U.S. Men’s National Team.
Where some players saw Schmid as a stoic, even aloof head coach, Evans had grown to know the man and became a trusted player confidant.
“I think the record speaks for itself,’’ Evans said. “As one of our great assistant coaches, Ezra Hendrickson, would always say, ‘They never ask how, they just ask how many.’’’
The final Schmid tally in Seattle: a 2014 Supporters’ Shield for the top regular-season record and four U.S. Open Cup championships. And legitimacy for a franchise that set MLS attendance records every year of his 7½-season coaching run.
Alas, Schmid never did add a third MLS Cup championship at the helm of his third team. That 2014 squad came the closest, edging the Galaxy for the Supporters’ Shield on the season’s final day only to lose a heartbreaker at home in the decisive Western Conference final match.
“Major League Soccer is devastated by the news of the passing of Sigi Schmid,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said in a statement. “Sigi will go down as one of the leading figures in the history of our league. From Los Angeles to Columbus and Seattle, Sigi won more games than any coach in MLS history and led his clubs to multiple championships, including two MLS Cups and five Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cups.
“Sigi’s passion for soccer was unrivaled, and he was loved and admired by everyone in MLS. We deeply mourn his passing and send our heartfelt condolences to his wife Valerie, their children, and all of his loved ones.”
Schmid’s reign with the Sounders was never really the same after 2014. It ended midway through a disappointing 2016 campaign that ultimately turned around in stunning fashion behind assistant Brian Schmetzer and resulted in the franchise’s only MLS Cup victory that year.
It would be a full year before Schmid returned to coaching.
He’d rarely had that long previously to contemplate his future, enjoying a stellar 19-year run with UCLA before joining the Galaxy five games into the 1999 season to replace Octavio Zambrano. Schmid would stay with the team just more than five seasons before being fired midway through 2004.
Then, after a season coaching the U.S. U20 squad, Schmid was hired by the Crew in 2006. It would be a full decade before his next prolonged time off came.
After his 2016 firing by the Sounders, Schmid, having taken 12 months away from the game, was hired by the Galaxy for a second go-round in July 2017. His first match, two days later, was against the Sounders in Carson, Calif. A Galaxy team lifeless for much of that season played the defending champion Sounders with a ferocity rarely seen that season and the game ended in a 0-0 draw.
Several Sounders warmly greeted their former coach post-match.
“He’s a great coach,” Sounders goalkeeper Frei said. “I’ve said this before, but he means a tremendous amount to me because of the way he resurrected my career. So, it’s good to see him get another shot. And I told him he can turn things around with L.A. As much as I don’t want that to happen because we know how dangerous they are if they get into the playoffs, I (wish) him all the best.’’
Schmid after the game admitted he was thrilled to be working in MLS again.
“It was great to be back on that sideline,’’ Schmid said. “I don’t know what it is, but I love this game. Nobody’s ever going to take that away from me. It’s just a passion and hopefully I can convey that passion on to my teams and my players.’’
Schmid engineered a flurry of offseason moves to restock the Galaxy and had them well positioned to make the playoffs with a strong first half in 2018. But then a late-summer swoon the team couldn’t pull out of eventually cost him his final job come September.
Both the Galaxy and Schmid termed it a mutual parting. There had been talk as the season progressed that Schmid was not physically looking well and those close to him expressed concern for his health. Schmid at the time denied his health had anything to do with the decision.
As chronicled by former Seattle Times soccer beat writer Matt Pentz for his upcoming book “The Sound and the Glory,” few people knew that Schmid had a health scare during the 2015 season with the Sounders. He was hospitalized four days with a heart-related condition and had discussed with his family whether it was wise to continue coaching.
Schmid’s wife, Valerie, and four children gave him the green light to continue.
“Everybody knows I’d probably be a miserable guy to be around if I wasn’t coaching,’’ Schmid says in the book.
In the end, he missed but two games and later said he hated every minute of it.
“Going through what I did, it just reinforced to me that this is what I love to do,’’ he said. “I want to do it for as long as I can and as long as people think I’m capable of doing it.’’
Sounders strike gold in getting Sigi Schmid as coach
By Steve Kelley, Seattle Times
The catch in Sigi Schmid's voice caught him by surprise. The sudden rush of emotion, the suddenly vivid thoughts of his late mother Doris, blindsided him as he spoke at Tuesday morning's news conference.
The first coach of Seattle’s new soccer club, Sounders FC, was talking about his younger brother Roland, who lives in Sammamish. He was mentioning how excited he was to be living in the same city as his brother for the first time since 1992.
And then he thought about his mother, who died when Sigi was 23 and Roland was 13. In a crowded meeting room inside Qwest Field, he paused for a moment, gathered himself and smiled.
“As you can tell, I’m an emotional guy,” Schmid said, as his brother looked on from the back of the room.
After their mom’s death, Roland leaned on Sigi to show him how to progress through American schools, American soccer, American life.
Sigi mentored his brother with the same combination of compassion and counsel that he has mentored soccer players at UCLA and in MLS with the Los Angeles Galaxy and Columbus Crew.
“After our mother died, he absolutely kind of automatically became brother-slash-father figure,” said Roland Schmid, who played for his brother at UCLA.
“He gave me a lot of guidance. When he first came out of high school and went to college he had some mentors who helped him through that decision. Our parents came from Germany and they knew nothing about colleges, nothing about the process.
“I wasn’t going to get that kind of help from my father, either, so my brother helped me through all the school and all those things you do as American kids that we were not accustomed to.”
Even then, when he was helping his brother cope with the death of their mother and grieving her loss, Sigi Schmid, who came to this country with his parents when he was 7, was coaching. It seems he was born to this manner.
“Even though we were 10 years apart, it was never a situation where I was trying to get rid of my brother, so I could hang with some other people,” Sigi said after the news conference. “It was always a situation where I didn’t mind him hanging around.
“And when we lost our mother, it was a difficult time for him. And it was a real difficult time for my father [Fritz]. He was a typical German father who really didn’t do much around the house. He had to learn to cook and do all that stuff for himself. I was glad I was there because it offered sort of a respite from what my brother was going through with our dad.”
Sigi Schmid has been coaching all his adult life. And he has a résumé as thick as a Dostoyevsky novel.
He was the other wizard at Westwood. In 19 years at UCLA, Schmid was 322-63-33. He won three national championships, including an eight-overtime final in the Kingdome over American in 1985.
As a player at UCLA, he used to come into Pauley Pavilion from soccer practice and watch the last half-hour of basketball coach John Wooden’s practices. Schmid took mental notes.
“It was a tremendous education,” Schmid, 55, said. “Coach Wooden’s attention to detail, his attention to fundamentals and the quiet leadership. … He got the most out of every player.”
A mere 90 days before their opener at home against MLS runner-up New York Red Bulls, Sounders FC introduced Schmid to Seattle.
The Sounders struck gold with this first coaching hire. Short of stealing Sir Alex Ferguson from Manchester United, they couldn’t have done much better.
How many expansion teams hire their league’s reigning coach of the year? How many expansion teams hire the coach of the league champions?
“When I used to talk with Sigi, I always came away thinking, ‘OK, I think I’ll try that,’ ” said Seattle Sounders alum Jimmy Gabriel, who coached against Schmid as an assistant at Washington. “He’s got good ideas about the game, solid ideas, but he’ll also have that little magic idea, something else that can turn a team around.”
While coaching the L.A. Galaxy, Schmid unlocked the secret to an underachieving team and led the Galaxy to the 2002 MLS Cup championship.
Last season he won again with Columbus.
“I think passionate would be the word for him,” said Sounders FC technical director Chris Henderson, who played for Schmid at UCLA and on U.S. national teams and has known the coach for 20 years.
“He can be an emotional guy. Definitely after winning he gets emotional. But also if there are times when he has to get on the team or on a player to motivate them, he’ll let you know that, too.
“I always felt like if I wanted to talk with Sigi I could walk into his office and talk with him about anything. That’s the kind of relationship he creates with the guys. He creates a bond with the players.”
Gabriel once told Schmid that soccer can’t be “fun, fun” and that it can’t be “serious, serious.”
It has to be “serious fun.”
Schmid practices that philosophy.
Henderson remembers the UCLA players, putting a new wrinkle onto an old cliché, occasionally dumping Gatorade on Schmid at the end of practices.
“We’d get him every once in a while after practice, and sometimes he was not happy about it,” Henderson said. “Those are just the things that bring a team together.
“He was still the coach and we respected that, of course, but we had that relationship with him where we felt like we could joke around.”
Sports in Seattle has been a little too serious for a little too long. The timing feels right for a dose of Sigi Schmid’s “serious fun.”
