Brian Schmetzer and the burden of repeating the Sounders' MLS Cup win

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/feb/21/brian-schmetzer-seattle-sounders-mls-cup-interview

Version 0 of 1.

Brian Schmetzer’s storybook year came complete with a final cinematic flourish, in which he hopped off the trolley carrying his MLS Cup champion Sounders through the streets of Seattle to walk with supporters leading the parade.

The connection between a head coach and the fans who root on his team can feel clichéd, fraught – but not in this case.

A Seattle native, Schmetzer grew up in the 1970s rooting for the North American Soccer League version of the club before signing for them as a player at the age of 17. He was working in construction and coaching local youth soccer teams in 2002, when the owner of the then-minor-league Sounders offered him a job, and Schmetzer was named Sigi Schmid’s top assistant upon the team’s ascension to Major League Soccer in 2009.

In many ways, one can trace the history of Seattle soccer through Schmetzer’s personal career arc. So there was something serendipitous in the hometown product being the one who helped finally deliver the club’s first championship after years of letdowns and near-misses. That prompts an obvious question ahead of Schmetzer’s first full season in charge after taking over from a deposed Schmid last July: what can he possibly do for an encore?

Sitting in his cluttered office at the Sounders practice facility earlier this month, Schmetzer says the greater significance of what his team accomplished last December still hasn’t fully sunk in.

“Every now and again, but it hasn’t hit me, not really,” Schmetzer said, adding that his too-brief offseason had been consumed by the challenge of ensuring this year is less chaotic than the one that preceded it. “Last year, we kind of flew by the seat of our pants. Shit happened.”

Indeed. When Schmetzer replaced Schmid – the only head coach the club had known in its MLS era and who was fired following a dispiriting 3-0 loss at Kansas City last July – Seattle were 10 points out of the sixth-and-final Western Conference playoff berth. The Sounders finished the regular season on an 8-2-4 clip, knocked off the two top seeds in the West in the playoffs and beat Toronto on penalty kicks on TFC’s home turf in the Cup final.

It’s tough to separate Schmetzer’s influence from the transformative signing of Nicolas Lodeiro. Lodeiro’s arrival coincided so neatly with Schmid’s departure that the veteran coach was still in the building when the Uruguayan showed up to finalize the paperwork for his transfer from Boca Juniors. Lodeiro tallied eight assists and four goals over the final 13 matches of the regular season, was named MLS Newcomer of the Year for his efforts and tacked on four more goals in six playoff games.

It is evident, however, that something in Schmetzer’s message to his squad clicked.

The bespectacled 54-year-old describes in detail the importance of his first meeting with Clint Dempsey, the team’s highest-profile player and what Schmetzer describes as its “big dog”. Dempsey listened to the new coach’s blueprint for greater player empowerment impassively – then went out and scored five goals in three games before being shut down for the season with an irregular heartbeat.

That the Sounders were able to steady themselves in absence of the USA star and still make the run that they did is testament to the resonance of Schmetzer’s message. It’s also true that the urgency that was Seattle’s trademark over the final three months was easier to instill when every game was so obviously crucial to the team’s playoff chances. Reestablishing that intensity prior to a trip to San Jose in early April is a different kind of challenge.

“Every game last year for us was a final,” Schmetzer said. “We needed to win every single game. And I don’t know that I have an answer for how you make a group of players think that the first game of the season, the second, the third, the fourth until the midpoint of the season [is important]. I don’t know if I have an answer for that.

“I can talk until I’m blue in the face. ‘Every game is important’” – here, Schmetzer claps his hands for emphasis – “all of that coach-speak. We say that anyway. But finding that real connection, that real message that gets them to believe, that’s always the trick. I think that will be an ongoing process.”

As will dealing with significant roster turnover. Two days after lifting the trophy in Toronto, Seattle declined the 2017 contract options of 13 players, including Nelson Valdez (the Paraguayan international who scored a pair of crucial playoff goals), Andreas Ivanschitz (previously of Levante in Spain’s La Liga) and Tyrone Mears (the former Derby County, Burnley and Bolton Wanderers right back).

“That group is hard to replace,” Schmetzer said. “That is my one fear, that we won’t somehow get it together or that it takes a little time.”

The Sounders have added alternative pieces for Schmetzer to fit into his trusty 4-2-3-1 formation. Some shine has come off Harry Shipp, but it’s not so long ago that the 25-year-old midfielder was considered one of the brightest prospects in American soccer. Will Bruin, added in a trade with Houston, is an established, reliable MLS goalscorer.

This is a lesson Schmetzer learned from his seven-and-a-half years under Schmid: “If you don’t change one or two of the right pieces, your team kind of stagnates – even if you haven’t won MLS Cup.”

It’s hard to picture Schmetzer resting on his laurels. He’s been forced to prove himself from the moment he signed that initial Sounders contract just weeks out of high school.

An ankle-biting midfielder, Schmetzer was still in his prime when the NASL folded in 1984, plunging American soccer into its dark ages. He played indoor soccer in Tulsa, San Diego and St Louis, coming home to launch his coaching career as an assistant with the Seattle SeaDogs – who also folded shortly after winning a league title in 1997.

Schmetzer led the minor-league Sounders to USL titles in both 2005 and 2007 but was passed over for Schmid when the club made the leap to MLS. When Schmid was let go last summer, Schmetzer was given the role only on an interim basis and general manager Garth Lagerwey spoke of a wide-ranging coaching search.

Want the full-time gig, Brian? Overcome a 10-point deficit with only a sliver of the season remaining – without Dempsey for the bulk of it – and maybe we’ll talk. Among his personal highlights from last year’s run: Lagerwey pulling him aside following regular-season finale against Salt Lake to tell him that the job was his. “That was a big moment for me,” Schmetzer said. “I appreciated what he said. I appreciated that they gave me a chance. I didn’t know that I was going to get that chance. I’d waited around here for many years … In that sense, I’m grateful.”

The speed of Schmetzer’s recent rise is not lost on him. He can give off the vibe of a man who, while self-assured about his own talent and ability to take on the job, is a bit bewildered to have actually had his dreams come true.

Of the opportunity to coach a player like Dempsey, for example, Schmetzer describes himself as “tickled pink.”

“Not in 100 million years would I have ever thought in my wildest dreams that I would be able to coach arguably, but in my opinion, the most talented forward this country has ever produced,” Schmetzer said.

Another flashpoint from last year’s run: hopping off that trolley to be among the crowd celebrating his team’s triumph last December. The setting for the rally, in the shadow of the Space Needle, was appropriate. Schmetzer’s USL Sounders played their home games at crumbly old Memorial Stadium a few hundred yards away. The distance covered between his last USL title and first MLS one was keenly felt.

“It just solidified my thought process on ‘what is the club?’ The club is the connection between the fans and the players,” Schmetzer said. “I truly believe that.

“The people were so happy. The people just wanted to be close to the players. They wanted to touch the players. They wanted to take their selfies with the trophy and the players. That moment gives me a little bit of civic pride.”

Civic pride has never been something Schmetzer has lacked. He is a Seattle guy to the core. For years, he has referred to himself as a “steward” of the club, wedded only to its best interests.

That’s part of what made it so special and narratively convenient that he was the one to bring MLS Cup to his hometown.

Now, go out and do it again.