SEATTLE — The Seattle Sounders announced on Wednesday at the Alliance Annual Business Meeting that Brian Schmetzer would be the second head coach in the club’s Major League Soccer history.
Sounders Majority Owner Adrian Hanauer introduced a very humbled Schmetzer at the event inside CenturyLink Field.
“It’s an awesome day for myself and for my family,” Schmetzer said. “I’m proud to be the head coach of this team.”
The Sounders named Schmetzer interim head coach after parting ways with Sigi Schmid in late July. The head coach of the USL Sounders from 2002-08, the Seattle front office kept Schmetzer on the staff as an assistant after hiring Schmid before the club’s inaugural MLS season in 2009.
A Seattle native, Schmetzer praised Seattle soccer legends like Jimmy Gabriel, Kasey Keller and Alan Hinton, who drafted Schmetzer in 1980 in the club’s NASL days. Those in attendance gave Schmetzer, 54, a loud standing ovation. His hiring settled a couple months of speculation over whether he would be given the full-time job.
When Schmetzer took over, the team sat in ninth place in the Western Conference with just 20 points from 20 matches. Over the final 14 games, Seattle went 8-2-4 and locked up the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference, clinching not only a postseason berth but a home game to boot.
And the winning hasn’t stopped there. Seattle won a Knockout Round game over Sporting Kansas City last Thursday before romping Supporters’ Shield-winners FC Dallas 3-0 in the first leg of the conference finals on Sunday.
The transformation under Schmetzer’s direction did not go unnoticed in the front office. When asked why Schmetzer deserved the job and why the organization decided to announce it on Wednesday, Sounders General Manager and President of Soccer Garth Lagerwey was succinct:
“Duh,” he quipped.
Schmetzer was certainly afforded some luxuries when he took over, most notably the arrival of Designated Player Nicolas Lodeiro and return of center back Roman Torres, but Schmetzer’s first few months did not go exactly according to plan either. The Sounders lost Clint Dempsey for the rest of the season to an irregular heartbeat and just when the Sounders had begun to play well enough to give a glimmer of playoff hope.
But Schmetzer never wavered.
“He’s overcome a lot of things,” Lagerwey said. “[Schmetzer] said, ‘We’ll figure it out.’ It’s that attitude that comes from the head coach, that shared responsibility…it’s been really, really good for this club’s success.”
As someone who has been an integral part of the organization for as long as he has, Schmetzer understands just how much it means to the fans the community. He knows it will live on well after he, other coaches on his staff and this group of players one day move on.
“Hinton kept this club alive,” Schmetzer said. “This club is the only thing that’s going to continue. This club will always be here. It’ll always be the fans and the relationships with the players.”
Unlike during last year’s council meeting, the Sounders are still alive in the Audi 2016 MLS Cup Playoffs. Seattle will play its second leg of the Western Conference Semifinals against FC Dallas on Sunday in Frisco, Texas (6 p.m. PT; KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, El Rey 1360AM).
Boasting that commanding 3-0 advantage, Seattle is a 94 percent favorite to advance to the Western Conference Finals. But as Schmetzer noted earlier in the week, the Sounders are not going to bunker down and park the bus.
“This team is too good not to go out with that mentality [to win the game],” Schmetzer said. “If we score one, they gotta score a ton more.
“I hope we’re dancing after the game.”
