Sigi Schmid
Sigi Schmid
Siegfried "Sigi" Schmidis a German-American soccer coach who most recently coached Seattle Sounders FC in Major League Soccer. Born in Tübingen, West Germany, he moved to the United States with his family when he was a child. He played college soccer from 1972 to 1975 at the University of California, Los Angeles , where he was a starting midfielder in each of his four years. He coached his former college team, the UCLA Bruins, between 1980 and 1999. During that period,...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth20 March 1953
CityTubingen, Germany
We don't want to push him too quickly too early. With a player like Duncan, you need to be careful because he is the type of guy that gives you everything he has. We have to keep the reins on him.
Joel is a young guy who can play a number of different positions. He is big plus for us as well.
We have seven guys out injured. That makes it tough.
One thing that Eddie gives us is a guy who can try to drop off the front line and come at the defense a little bit.
I didn't think we were two goals worse. I thought the first 15 minutes of the second half we owned and then we give up the third goal and that takes the wind out of the sails so to speak. The adjustments were just guys needing to work a little harder.
He's not that much different than Frankie in how he plays right back. He's a strong personality in the locker room and he's extremely motivated. He's a guy that the younger guys will be able to turn to and talk to.
I told the guys and the staff that this was a special game for me, they knew that. But the most important thing was to get three points and move out of last place in the East, but everyone knew it was a special game and I thank them for their effort.
I want to those three guys not to be fringe national team players, but national team players as the team prepares for the World Cup in 2010.
I think we've created a much more competitive environment. There is competition in all of the facets of the field.
Joel is a versatile defender who was here for our mini-camp in November. He can play centrally or on the right and is a young player with great potential.
My objective is that we want to win a title this year. If it doesn't happen, we are going to be immensely better than last year. It doesn't take that long to turn around a team.
We've got to get him the ball in the box. He hasn't had a lot of opportunities in the box yet and so as we become better and as we become more in sync as a team, that will improve.
We need to improve on our concentration. We made a stride forward in the second half and proved that we can play good soccer. We should have been leading at halftime. We have to become mentally stronger.
He should be getting some minutes for us this year. That's our expectation. That's why we drafted him. If we didn't expect him to play, we wouldn't have taken him.