SEATTLE — Sigi Schmid, Already the Major League Soccer leader in games coached and games won, will reach another milestone Saturday at Vancouver when he coaches his 400th regular-season game.
“It has been a while,” said Schmid, the only coach the Seattle Sounders have ever had. “Believe me, because I got into the league three years after everybody else, so I never thought I would get to 400 games ahead of everybody else.”
Schmid was leading a college soccer dynasty at UCLA in 1996 when MLS kicked off for the first time. The Los Angeles Galaxy contacted him then, but he had reservations regarding team facilities and a deal wasn’t struck.
There was another near miss before the 1998 season, when Schmid seemed poised to take over at San Jose, but an ownership change ended that deal.
Finally, before the 1999 season, the Galaxy reached out again.
“I actually wanted to coach that one more year at UCLA, because I knew I had a team that could win an NCAA title,” he said. “I said ‘How about after the season,’ and they said, ‘No, we’re going to change now, so it’s now or never.’ So we were able to work out a contract that allowed me to stay in L.A. with my kids to get them through high school, so that was good.’”
UCLA went on to the NCAA semifinals without Schmid, and the Galaxy went on to the MLS Cup final with him.
His Galaxy won the MLS Cup in 2002, but Schmid was fired after a 9-6-7 start to the 2004 season. He was out of the league in 2005, but returned at Columbus in 2006. Two seasons later, he won his second MLS Cup there before joining the expansion Sounders in 2009.
He will take a 179-123-97 career record into his 400th MLS regular-season game.
“It’s certainly a reflection on some good teams and good players and they’ve performed well,” Schmid said. “We’ve been able to figure out how to get the result more times than not, and that’s an important part of it to get to 400. I feel very honored to get to 400 and to be the first one to get there. I would like it to be many, many more, and I would like a few more titles along the way.”
Security nightmare
Sounders general manager Adrian Hanauer said the club is investigating what went wrong with new security procedures put in place for Wednesday’s game at CenturyLink Field.
The increased security, using hand held metal detector wands, left long lines of fans waiting outside the stadium as the team began its 2-0 win over D.C. United.
“We clearly didn’t have enough people dealing with the wanding,” he said. “I don’t know why we didn’t have enough people, how we came to the conclusion that X-number of people were the right number of people, whether there were extenuating circumstances.
“My hunch is it was a late-arriving crowd because it was a week night and there was traffic, but that’s no excuse. We need to be prepared for whoever shows up, whenever.”
The club’s next home game is July 20 against the Colorado Rapids.
Martinez gone?
Schmid said the return of midfielder Mario Martinez is “becoming a dead issue, or close to that.”
However, he also suggested the team’s general manager as the better source about Martinez’s future with the team.
“Mario is off our roster at this point, based on the fact that his loan expired,” Hanauer said. “We’re still in communication, but I would agree with Sigi that things are looking less and less like he’ll come back. But until he has a new team, until things are set in stone, I guess you never say never.”
Finally, a July 4 off
The club trained Thursday at Starfire Sports Complex in Tukwila before scattering to enjoy the Fourth of July holiday. That was a rare treat for the Sounders, who spent Independence Day 2012 playing at Salt Lake, and 2011 and 2010 in Los Angeles.
“To be honest with you I don’t remember having a Fourth of July that hasn’t been on the road,” veteran defender Zach Scott said. “It seems like it’s been so long; so yeah, this has been really great.”
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