SEATTLE SOUNDERS FC

Why the Sounders finally hired Brian Schmetzer as full-time head coach

Nov 4, 2016, 3:22 PM

Sounders GM Garth Lagerway on naming Brian Schmetzer head coach: “He earned it. He was lights out...

Sounders GM Garth Lagerway on naming Brian Schmetzer head coach: “He earned it. He was lights out.” (AP)

(AP)

It finally happened. The Seattle Sounders officially removed the interim tag from Brian Schmetzer’s title, making him the full-time head coach of the club. It was a move many fans, pundits, and journalists (including yours truly) called for thanks to Schmetzer’s remarkable turnaround of the team since he took over in July.

The 2016 season had been by far one of the worst in the Sounders’ MLS history. Previous coach Sigi Schmid led the team to its worst start since joining the league in 2009. Despite his status as a club and US Soccer legend, Schmid was starting look like he had lost his touch. He had taken the team to the playoffs in every single year he had coached it, starting in that debut 2009 season. But he could never secure the MLS Cup for Seattle, and his team looked set to miss the playoffs for the first time this year. They floundered around in ninth place in late July, and a demoralizing 3-0 loss in Kansas City seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Schmetzer was made interim head coach after the club parted ways with Schmid. Newer fans might not be aware of the significance of Schmetzer, but he’s a pretty big deal in the Seattle soccer community. He first joined the NASL Sounders as a player in 1980, when then-coach Alan Hinton recruited him straight out of Nathan Hale High School. Schmetzer’s playing career took him all over the country, but he finished back in Seattle with the Seattle SeaDogs, a former local indoor club. After a short stint as an assistant coach, Schmetzer took time off from the game for a few years.

But it didn’t take long for the beautiful game to draw him back. The Sounders had been reinvigorated in 1994 as a member of the A-League (which became USL), and in 2002 the club needed a new direction and a new coach. Adrian Hanauer, who had just purchased the club after being a lifelong fan, decided that Schmetzer was the man for the job. From 2002 to 2008, Schmetzer led the team to two league titles and was nominated for Coach of the Year in 2007. But when Hanauer’s ownership group eventually secured expansion to MLS, Schmetzer lost out on the job to Schmid.

For over seven seasons, Schmetzer was Schmid’s top assistant coach. And when he took over the team on July 26, he never looked back. The team went from ninth to fourth place by the end of the season with an 8-2-4 record and a plus-15 goal differential. He has won his first two playoff matches so far, including the incredible 3-0 win over FC Dallas last weekend.

“(Schmetzer) earned it,” Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey said Wednesday at the Annual Business Meeting where the team announced the decision that Schmetzer had been named head coach. “He was lights out.”

It turns out that Lagerwey and Hanauer had hoped to make Schmetzer the head coach from day one, but they had to see how things turned out. As a Seattle soccer legend and a popular figure in the community, this turned out to be the best thing for all parties. Contrary to what they had said when Schmetzer took over, Hanauer said after the meeting that the ownership group said to themselves near the end of the regular season that “we’re certainly not going to go through the process of interviewing people if we know we’ve got the right man for the job right now.”

And so after the Sounders secured the playoffs against Real Salt Lake, Lagerwey took Schmetzer aside and said “you’re my guy.” After the contracts were signed and everything was finalized, history was made. Now it’s time to see how far Schmetzer can take this team in his first MLS Cup playoff run.

Spenser Davis also covers the Sounders for Sounder at Heart.

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