Sigi Schmid - should there be a role for him with the national teams?

I recall that he did train with the Galaxy, but it appears I was mistaken about that.

I've always kept mum about what I knew about Beasley vs Sigi, but since Sandon has let the cat out of the bag, it was indeed the fact that the clan felt he would not develop appropriately under Sigi.

 

Sigi Schmid

If it weren't for Coby, Marquez wouldnt have a bitch

 

Really? I think you might want to check past and present University of Portland rosters to make sure you are being accurate in this statement. A couple of SoCal players who opted for UP are now playing professional soccer both domestically and abroad at the highest level.

And Karl, I appreciate the exchange, and I see your point of view, but as these things are subjective and there will never be a right or wrong, I'll happily agree to disagree agreeably.

Sandon, I knew the history of Jamar, DMB, and Sigi, as well, (it isn't any sort of secret) but thought it to be irrelevant to this discussion. I do not remember any quotes from the family that stated they didn't feel DMB would not develop under Sigi. I just remember them, to understate it completely, disliking him.

And Sigi was right on in his valuation of Twellman, Allbright, and Jamar, no matter what the Beasley clan thought about it.

Like I said earlier, I regard both as the cream of the crop in American soccer coaches, but if I had to make a choice, it would be Sigi.

 

Re: Re: Re: Sigi Schmid - should there be a role for him with the national teams?

Can you believe this? I can't.

 

My view is that, unless someone wants to move something in a different direction, it should always be about issues and ideas, not people and personalities.

The reason they disliked him so much was for that reason -- among some others.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Sigi Schmid - should there be a role for him with the national teams?

Where is the picture with the side profile of Sigi? Everyone knows which one I am talking about.

I think Andy Mead posted it the last time I saw it.

 

What I'm curious to know is how Arena, Bradley and Schmid compare to each other and if it's really possible to categorize them with any certainty. It seems like only players who have spent a fair amount of time with all 3 of them would be able to distinguish clearly, and I can't think of any players who fit the bill.

As I see it,

Arena: Would appear that he does have an eye for talent given the player factory that UVA became, but you never know how much input his assistants had. Also, having Bradley under him at DC brings up the question of how much of a role Arena actually played in recruitment. Coaching wise he is a winner pure and simple. I can't point to any particular "trick" that he employs that allows his teams to do so well, but his teams all seem to be highly organized and well trained in executing a system of play.

Bradley: Given his success at Princeton, DC and Chicago it would appear that not only is he a good talent assessor, but he obviously knows how to put it all together. Having only his Chicago days to go on, Bradley's real virtue seems to be as a player manager. Out of all 3 I am guessing that Bradley is more of a players coach than the other two and is more adept at making changes in his teams style of play to achieve success.

Sigi: Like Arena I think Sigi is more of system based coach than a player based coach. He knows his system and he knows what he needs to make it work, but I think he is less likely to go out of his way to build around talent than say Bradley is. I know very little about his teams at UCLA, so I am just guessing based on what I see with the Galaxy.

All of this is really guesswork and impressions on my part. Still it seems like Schmid and Arena might be more similar to each other than either is to Bradley. It's too bad we couldn't have played out the last 4-5 years in an alternate universe using Bradley and Schmid as coaches just to see how different each of the teams may have been or played. However if Bradley manages to turn things around in New York I suspect he still might be Bruce's heir, if no other reason than their previous relationship. Still, it would be interesting to see how Sigi handled things.

 

Anyone have any Sigi v Bradley head to head statistics?

That might be interesting...

 

Sigi should work for the federation, but only on a covert basis. They need to figure out a way to get him into Mexico's program as a dietician.

 

Nutmeg and Keller, together again

I think Nutmeg has it right and Karl Keller is arguing well beyond his evidence. Bob and Sigi have records that are very similar. To my mind, the Fire have more talent on their roster than LA. You can give Bradley credit for assembling and then training that talent to where it receives more Nat callups, but you cannot then also credit him with coaching teams to do more with less talent, unless you want to have your cake, eat it, and claim a tax deduction on it too, for your charitable contribution of it to Sam’s army, of which you are a loyal member. Triple counting is going a little far even for a bigsoccer argument.

As Nutmeg pointed out, Sigi uses more role players with a healthy team than Bob does until the Fire has three or four major injuries. Moreno would not start for the Fire until at least two of the three top forwards were gone. Waibel, who started part of the year even when everyone was healthy, would not get a call until there were several back line injuries. Adam Frye is a West Coast David Vaudriel who starts a couple of injuries earlier. On the bench sit Albright, Bengard, and Mullan (even DC United wouldn’t exchange their bench for LA’s). And Sigi won it all. Sqeaking into the playoffs, (or to go back a year, losing to that same Galaxy) does not compare, even with substantial injuries.

To look at it another way, at the time Sigi took over, and Bradley had been coaching the Fire a year, their pools of talent looked rather similar: they seemed, along with DC, the class of the league. Since then, according to Keller, Sigi has let major talent slip through his fingers (DMB and Mathis, for starters) while Bob was finding and developing young players at a faster rate. LA has lost more players to league interference, and as many to the cap (who would you rather lose—Gutierrez or Robin Frasier?) Chicago’s talent pool must now be much bigger than LA’s, right? Well, no, its only a little bigger, which suggests Sigi has been finding and developing some talent of his own.

I would be happy with either as USMNT head coach, but I think Karl also gets the tradeoffs between them wrong. Bradley is the safest choice that could possibly be made. He is sound on everything. But if you want a coach touched by magic, who will (some of the time) take a team far beyond where it ought to be able to go, and who will steal games with tactical adjustments no one else would try, you want Sigi. (Sigi seems, to me, much less easy to predict and understand than Bob or Bruce.) But Sigi is, I think, a little more likely to have personal problems with a player that will lead to the player being dropped from the pool. He will take more risks, and some of them won’t work.

If the USSF had the finances, Bradley would be a great czar of all the youth teams and head of player development, while Sigi coached the USMNT. For the moment, Bruce is better than either, because of the experience, and because he combines the strengths of each. In four years, between Bob and Sigi, the one who has done best in MLS after 2002 will have the edge, as it should be.

 

System?

Is Sigi a “system coach” as Tejas suggests? I think Sigi is just the reverse. He completely revamped the defensive system in the middle of the season from flat back four to three with sweeper to find something that better fit his players. Ruiz and Moreno/Albright play differently than past forward combinations, and there is nothing to suggest Sigi objected. Cobi plays a role only he could play—not the sign of a generic coaching system. In the midfield, the defensive responsibilities among Elliot, Victorine and Hendricksen seem to change game by game, as does their positioning on the field.

Sigi likes versatile, wellrounded players: defenders who can attack, forwards who defend, midfielders who can do everything all over the field. They allow him to make lots of tactical adjustments from game to game, especially in the midfield, and he clearly works hard to get the matchups he wants while denying the other team the ability to dictate matchups to LA. This seems to me the antithesis of system based coaching—everything is tailored, game by game to his players and the opposing players.

There are downsides to this. You could argue that Sasha Victorine would have developed more quickly if he was given just one position to play with consistent responsibilities rather than played everywhere from forward to left back.

 

Re: Nutmeg and Keller, together again

Well, ShortCorner, good arguments but a few quibbles.

First, the "doing well with less" argument revolves around Princeton and this year particularly, with the spate of injuries. But the Fire have always had the injury bug with key players, though this year was particularly awful, and yet have still managed to do well.

Second, if we accept the premise that Bradley has or has had a better talent pool, it's because, well, he found the players no one seemed to have much use for, or knew so little about, as well as taking players everyone KNEW were good, and turning them into national team level players -- or top MLS players. In other words, finding more where other folks thought there was less (by the way, that includes Gutierrez, who KC had given up for dead). Siigi has indeed been finding talent and deploying it well, no question, but has he combined the ability to nurture talent into top drawer players AND win like Bradley? Don't think so.

Third, if you look at my original post, I agree that when it comes to being a game day tactician, Sigi probably has a leg up on Bob. He is clearly very inventive, and very flexible in how he approaches opponents, and maximizes the effectiveness of a unit. He is an exceptional molder of teams, and has proven he can adjust year over year quite effectively. So I don't think we disagree there.

Finally, and I will admit more of the fan may be coming out here, I believe that the Fire, with all of its key players in place, played more of an international style game, over the past five years, than any other team in MLS . Namely, very fast-paced, tight spaced, on the ground soccer, where a premium is put on good touches, up the gut central channel attacks, and high pressure defense all over the field.

Sigi, despite his ability to switch formational gears and tactics, is at heart a short-short-long man, and looks for isolation so his speedy attackers can overwhelm slower defenders and exploit misshapes at the back. In the international game, however, defenders are VERY fast, and defenses VERY organized, so this approach may turn out to be much less effective.

 

Re: Re: Nutmeg and Keller, together again

To answer my earlier question, I only looked back over the 2002, 2001, and 2000 regular seasons, but in that time, Sigi v Bob has been a lopsided affair, if I've counted correctly.

By my count, Sigi's record vs Bob is 5-2-1.

In that same time Sigi's Galaxy knocked the Fire out of the playoffs the only time they've met.

I'd say that is pretty telling. Nothing like head to head stats to see who is accomplishing more, with whatever they might have on the field.

Unfortunately, I could not find a place that has past results for either the Galaxy or the Fire. Tough to find. Does anyone know of a good place to actually see previous season MLS results? Christ, it's like trying to find records of the Spanish Inquisition.

 

Sigi is a good coach but the USSF is afraid of what the food budget would be if Sigi took over.

 

Unfortunately I have to go to work in a minute, but the idea that Karl and others out out that Bradley was somehow victimized by injuries is not only wrong but points to some poor team management by Bradley the last few years. With the tight salary cap, MLS is a league where managers must make difficult decisions on the higher salaried players- they HAVE to produce or the team is essentially handicapped. Thus if a team has a high salaried player who is showing a continual problem with injuries that if that team is to be competitive that player must be gotten rid of even if it's for seemingly 2 cents on the dollar. Steve Nichol has just shown that a well coached team of second line players, with only one of two stars can go far.

So with the Fire, Bradley has been carrying Wolff, Nowak, Armas, and Stoichkov for starters and these guys are just not productive nearly enough for the Fire to be taken seriously since they are injured so much (even Armas). They eat way too much out of the Fire's cap and thus the Fire have been getting a little worse every year with an obvious slip this year. Because the Fire have spent too much on these chronically injured players, depended on them in the naive hope that they would stay healthy, they have had no room for decent backups. I will say that Bradley has done much better than what Rongen did with DCU in a similar situation, but coaching a team to the seventh best record in the league isn't much of an accomplishment.

This is a huge contrast with LA. Sigi seemingly always has decent subs. Guys like Victorine and Frye who can play several positions. He also keeps his team pretty young and those players have little history of injuries so the "bad luck" of the Fire is unlikely to visit LA anytime soon. Thus it's no suprise that since 2000 LA has gotten steadily better while the Fire have slowly gotten worse- it's Sigi's leadership and vision.

I have no doubt that either coach would be a good nats team coach. But Sigi is hands down a better manager of a team long-term, than Bradley is.

 

Re: Sigi Schmid

Yet which one was still on the field at the final whistle?

 

I think the arguments put forth by ursula and short corner are great arguments.

The best argument, though, is the case that Sigi has made for himself against Bob Bradley. The old saying holds true here, you want to be the best, you better beat the best.

Karl says that his money is on Bradley in 2006. By all appearances, Bradley looks to be the heir apparent. Because of his association with Arena, because he has worked closely with the MNT and will have done so for 8 years when the next cycle comes around, and because in fact he is a very good coach, Karl might be right. But I hope for Bradley's sake that the decision is not made based upon his track record against Sigi. If it were, he wouldn't get the job.

Of the three points Karl gave in favor of Bradley, I see Karl employing a common practice of exaggerating the virtues of his ex-coach, and downplaying those of Sigi. But keeping that in mind, his arguments are still weak.

1. Karl's doing more with less argument has been well picked apart on this thread. As Short Corner well pointed out, LA's roster is full of journeymen who have been cast aside, or never considered at all, by Bradley or any other MLS coach. To find these types of journeymen players requires that a coach sees in that player qualities that will help make his team a better one. In other words, a great eye for talent.

2. Karl's argument that Bradley has a better eye for talent is VERY weak, especially considering the head to head records of Bradley and Schmidt. Schmidt has built winning PROGRAMS, not just teams, at both UCLA and LA. You don't do that without having a great eye for talent, and as Ursula pointed out, you don't do that in MLS unless you can manage that telent against a difficult budget. Fact is, Sigi has done at least as well, if not better, than identifying and managing the talent to make his program a winner, than has Bradley. If you don't believe me, feel free to compare the records.

3. Even if we were to assume that Bradley is a better developer of players than Sigi, which he may in fact be marginally better, so what? Would that make him a better coach of the MNT? Since it is not the job of the MNT coach to develop players, what I hear Karl saying is that Bob would make a great youth national team coach. I don't disagree.

It's not like we are comparing good and evil here. They are both great coaches. But given Sigi's record against who is considered the best coaching talent in MLS, again, the evidence points to Sigi having the uppper hand.

 

Los Angeles vs. Chicago

Los Angeles 13 wins
Chicago 8 wins
2 Draws

Los Angeles 29 goals
Chicago 24 goals

This includes MLS league, MLS Cup, and USOC play. Both LA and CHI have won a playoff series against each other; LA in 2001 and CHI in 1998.

 

Preston North End, is it possible for you to break this record down since Sigi took over as head coach for LA?

 

Well, they are both smart guys. But I line up with Karl on this one. In particular, I found Ursula's argument that Bradley is responsible for signing the injury-prone Fire players to be logically a stretch and factually unsupported. I say the latter because I know of no definite source that makes Bradley -- as opposed to MLS or Wilt responsible for the Stoichkov signing, which is the major reason for Chicago's roster problems. And I think it is ridiculous to imply that Bradley should have known that, for example, Josh Wolff, was injury prone when they signed him. Sometimes there is such a thing as luck.

To me this is just an old saying -- too many variables play into this and the rules at the international level are so different that I can't see this as much of a factor.

I am confident that a broader criteria will be used.

This seems like a pointless detour in the direction of attacking the poster and not his ideas. Let's get on with it.

I think the journeyman-packing-LA's-roster argument is the clearest example of exageration on this thread. LA clearly has one of the most talented rosters in MLS, second only to Chicago in my view. The clearest example of this is Pete Vaegnas, who Nutmeg and I both agree is a real talent, was not a starter in the MLS Cup. The only weakness is the second forward spot, and I am not sure that Wolde Harris, for example, is much better than what LA threw out there.

I think they are the two strongest in MLS in doing this. But Sigi's talent is made up of either (1) foreigners who are among the best in their country (Marshall, Hendrickson, Cienfuguous, Ruiz, Elliot) or (2) players with award-studded US youth national teams past (Lalas, Califf, Vaegnas, Victorine, Jones and Albright). Only Waibel, Hartman and Moreno can be considered in any way hidden gems when Sigi got ahold of them. None of these guys qualify as CJ Brown or Jim Curtin did as true unknowns found by Bradley.

Agreed, that this is not a major criteria. However, while a national team coach is not the main coach in the food chain responsible for development (that is the club coach), it is a bonus to be able to add a little development to the cream of the crop.

Once again, I personally won't sign off on this as a major criteria. Along with what Karl talked about, I Iike the other argument he made that Sigi's style of play is not well suited to the international level. I think that Sigi's tendecy to long-ball attack won't work as well at the next level and, like Steve Ralston and Jason Kreis, MLS proficiency may not translate in the international game.

 

Perhaps I chose a bad example (I don't know whether UCLA offered Dolo a scholarship), but you're reversing cause and effect here. Great SoCal prospects didn't always choose UCLA. However, that's not because UCLA was being out-recruited. The Bruins simply didn't have enough scholarships to go around. As yet another example, Schmid had the luxury of turning down Eric Wynalda. After all, he had Joe-Max Moore in the pipeline.

 

I'll go further in what I'm getting at here.

First, signing a player who turns out later to be injury prone- hey anyone and every coach will do this. One can't anticipate the future in this regard, particularly with younger players. However there's a huge difference between that and 1) depending on younger players who have shown a chronic tendency to injury (like Armas before any major international tournament or Wolff every year) and 2) depending on aging vets to keep producing at the level they did few years before. That's almost a guarantee that they'll get injured for you. Depending on Nowak to be a major cog for you is like DCU depending on Etcheverry to still be the straw that stirs their drink. Pure fantasy. One doesn't see Sigi doing that crap with Cien now does one?

Sometimes the chronic injuries can be catastrophic, especially for younger players and sometimes they are smaller injuries that impede their abilities but a successful MLS coach needs to be able to read the situation and unload such players.

To be fair to Bradley I think that there are very few coaches in any sport who recognise this pattern. as the saying goes, it's much easier to be able to win a title than to repeat. Just ask Yallop who tried to repeat with a pat hand only to have Manny Lagos not repeat his career year and not having his starting- and aging and injury prone central defense (Agoos and Dayak) able to get through the season injury free. Many folks have been willing to say here that Yallop is a great coach, but to me, seeing what he does now will be a true test of how good he is.

So compared to Yallop, Bradley still stands clearly ahead. After his brilliant first year (98) getting to the top (like Yallop last year), 99 saw the Fire unable to maintain such a high standard, and honestly that year is troubling to me in that he couldn't get the attention fully of his main players. But Bradley got the team clicking again in 00. He got the team to play better than Sigi's and only KC/Gansler's career year could stop them. But since then, the Fire have slowly gotten worse. Every year we hear about how snake bitten the Fire are with injuries... while LA has steadilly pulled away from them all the while changing most of the roster and having his #10 have less and less of a role (again unlike Bradley with Nowak).


Second the idea that Bradley should in any way be let off the hook for the Stoichkov signing is wrong, particularly when we are talking about a possible head coach for the Nats. Look, DCU under was totally Arena's team. The buck stopped with him. He had a very good helper in Kevin Payne, who could manipulate MLS rules to get Arena what he wanted, but still the team was Arena's totally. LA under Sigi shows the same thing. When Luis Hernandez was signed by MLS for LA, Sigi bellyached (sorry) about the players who he had to give up for it, but his team never was worse than third best in the western division (and that was due to the KC career year). Sigi took responsibility for Hernandez, did his best with him and promptly got rid of him, getting a better player in return (Ruiz). So if Sigi is responsible for Hernandez, Bradley had better be responsible for Stoichkov and the fallout from it and the fact that he didn't properly deal with the lack of production from Stoichkov. I've never heard that Bradley ever ducked responsibility for Stoichkov, but if he did I'd have to wonder if he were the Nats coach and things weren't going so well, how would he duck then?

 

On concluding that head-to-head MLS results make Sigi a better choice to be a NATIONAL team coach -- well, the phrase "huge leap" springs to mind.

There are other more valid reasons to support Sigi -- for example, his game day preparation and intra-game adjustment abilities -- over Bradley.

Once again, I reiterate my original premise: a good coach is one who puts his players in a POSITION to win. The winning is ultimately the responsibility of the players.

I would dispute the notion that the Fire proceeded downhill after 2000. I though the 2001 side was once again among the class of the league.

I will look back at the 2001 game 3 loss by the Fire to the Galaxy, which I saw sitting in the West stands at Soldier Field, as the beginning of the end of a phase for the Fire -- for want of a better term, the Nowak-Bradley era.

That day, the Fire, even without Nowak field generalling, were the better team that crisp evening, and had the better of play throughout the game. In retrospect, it was the one last shot at Cup glory for this group, and the players -- yes, the PLAYERS (and specifically one player) -- were put into the position by Bob to take it and own it, and get to three MLS cup finals in 4 years. A goofy mental lapse in OT, and the great 4 year run of two Cup finals and an MLS and Open Cup championship ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.

No, he has never, to my knowledge, disavowed the Hristo signing.

Hristo is pretty much a whipping boy over on the Fire board, but he has been, on balance a tremendous player for the team, and was very instrumental in both 2000 and 2001 for the success the team had. It was good signing, not at all worth regretting.

 

Why is that a "huge leap?" Of course, if I were siding with Bradley in this debate, I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time talking about the failures he's had against Sigi, a top-level American coach, either. But the fact is, regardless of what might have been, could have been, or maybe even should have been in one series, Sigi over a long period of time has beaten Bradley on a consistent basis.

I bring up their head to head records only to start a conversation of WHY Sigi has dominated this matchup. There are certainly some legitimate debate points to be discussed here, and passing them off these results as irrelevant or meaningless by saying it's a "huge leap" to equate results in MLS matchups to International matchups is much like a lawyer trying to toss out evidence only because it is too damning against their case.

In my opinion, Sigi has beaten Bradley because he has done a better job of identifying talent that will work with the existing core of his team, deploying that talent in a way that makes the entire team better, and then having the flexibility to change tactics, lineups, and even personnel to the team he is facing on a particular day. On top of all that, Sigi has done it year-in, year-out, regardless of the unpredictable variables that come along. Bradley, OTOH, when it comes to facing Sigi, by and large has not. That's been the difference.

Those are the some of the exact requirements needed in any International Coaching job. They are, among others, the VERY qualities that led to Arena's success in the last World Cup. They are qualities that Arena developed first in the NCAAs, and then in MLS. Just like Sigi. While the level of play from MLS to International Soccer may be a "huge leap," Arena has shown that coaches who establish successful programs at the MLS level can also do so at the International Level. Sigi could very well do the same, regardless of how high of a jump it might be.

In any case, we'll have 4 more years to watch Sigi and Bradley battle it out in the two most powerful markets of MLS. If Sigi continues to dominate the matchup as he has done, then I will continue to question the prevailing assumption that Bradley is Arena's heir apparent for the coaching job of the MNT.

And Martin, I have made sure throughout this debate to attack the arguments made by Karl, and not Karl himself. I don't mind keeping this debate going, as long as we focus on the qualities we see in particular coaches and stay away from personal attacks. For my part, I will continue to try and do just that.

 

What is the International Style? (Mies van der Rohe for USMNT coach?)

My argument is not that Sigi is a better coach than Bob. They are both very good, with similar accomplishments. I just think some of the arguments made to find one better than the other do not work, or overlook similar arguments on the other side. Thus I agree with Martin Fischer that league interference makes it difficult to blame fully Bob for the length of Stoichkov’s contract or Sigi for Mathis’ departure.

Bradley’s supposed penchant for finding diamonds in the rough is mostly a feature of his being an expansion coach in the third year of the league. Of course he found players like CJ Brown. Who was he supposed to find for his team? MLS hadn’t been around long enough to have a full list of usual suspects and he had to fill a roster. All credit to him that he did it so well, but if his first MLS job had instead been San Jose 2001, we would instead be talking about how shrewd Bob was at trading draft picks for the right veterans.

It is tempting to read differences in the LA and Chi team styles as differences in their coaches, but that can be misleading too. Who is the real Ray Hudson, the one who coached Miami, or the one who coached DC (a terrible offensive team that could at least defend)? Instituting the Fire’s fluid passing game was made much easier by the presence of Nowak and Kubik. I don’t know what Bob or Sigi would make of JOB, Reyna, Donovan and Mathis, but I doubt that the USMNT under either would be a carbon copy of Chi or LA.

But assume Bob really is either more comfortable with, or better able to teach, the fluid passing game that Karl thinks, rightly, is a part of the style of most successful international teams. (Karl, you will admit that for the defensive side of the international coin, LA closes space and pressures the ball as well as the Fire does?)

There are other important aspects of the international game. As the FIFA Technical Committee emphasized in its report on WC2002, set pieces were extremely important in determining results in Korea/Japan. LA has been for the past two years the most dangerous team in MLS on set pieces.

There is the trend to greater emphasis on speed and athleticism: hard to see how this cuts against Sigi.

Martin, you often remark on USMNT threads that the international game puts a premium on defenders contributing to the attack. Again, LA is the class of MLS on this: The Galaxy in 2001 got 16 goals from the defense, and even with this years 3-5-2, Marshall, Lalas and Califf contribute more than the defenders for any other team.

Are these traits typical of all of Sigi’s teams, or just a function of the talent he had available in LA? Probably the later, which is my point: there is no strong evidence he has “short, short, long” tattooed on his heart, as opposed to “Church of What’s Working Now”. The key question is still who can better adjust to the overall international game and get more out of a pool of talented, but somewhat limited players? I still do not see much reason to prefer one coach over the other.