Although Sigi Schmid finished second behind LA’s Bruce Arena in MLS coach-of-the-year voting, Schmid rates his own performance as one of the best of his career.

Here’s what Schmid has to say last week when asked to rate the job he did with the Sounders, who overcame injuries to finish second in the league, win U.S. Open Cup and advance in CONCACAF Champions League.

Yeah, I think it was a good one.

It’s funny, even though it was probably my worst record ever, I think my first year at Columbus was probably one of the best seasons I coached, just because of the fact that we had in that season we had at one point 35 percent of our cap out injured. … And we were able to keep going. We never lost the locker room. The guys kept believing. Though we had a bad record and finished at the bottom, we were starting to be able to assemble the pieces. I was really happy with the job that year because I had never had a losing team, and I always wondered, ‘If I ever had a losing team, I going to lose these guys. They’re going to go off to left field, they’re not going to believe in the coach.’ And for us to be able to keep their focus and keep them motivated and keep them trying and not lose the locker room, I thought was great.

So, this year’s job was different, but again, I’m happy with it. But it’s more Read more »

Now that MLS has announced David Beckham’s selection of comeback player of the year, we are left to wait for the naming of MLS coach of the year.

The candidates are Sigi Schmid of Seattle, Bruce Arena of LA and Peter Vermes. Give the second-best record in the league despite playing almost the entire season without Steve Zakuani and O’Brian White, I think Schmid is the easy and logical call. But we’ll see.

While waiting, I’ll pass along this quote from Schmid, when I asked him to assess the season he presided over.

You always want to take the team to the highest level possible. And obviously Read more »

The Sounders dug themselves into a mighty deep hole by losing 3-0 on Saturday at Real Salt Lake.

However, digging out would not call for the greatest comeback in MLS playoff history.

That was performed by the 2003 San Jose Earthquakes, who fell four goals behind the Los Angeles Galaxy 13 minutes into the deciding game … rallied to tie in regulation … and advanced with another goal in extra time.

Sounders coach Sigi Schmid knows something about that, because he was coach of the Galaxy.

“We haven’t talked about that. That was such a weird game. … You …

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In addition of the individual topics tackled in the posts below, here’s some more of what coach Sigi Schmid had to say today after his club’s training session at Starfire:

On watching the tape of Saturday’s game) “It’s always the same. When you watch the tape, it’s never as bad as you thought it was and it’s never as good as you thought it was when you play well. Obviously, [Alvaro] Saborio scored a great second goal but I thought we fell asleep defensively on the throw in, so my thoughts really didn’t change. Offside—is he off? Is he not off? It’s fairly close. A lot of linesmen would call that offside. They called offside on Saborio in the second half when he was three yards onside. Usually you’d expect the 50/50 calls don’t go the way of the forwards. It happened but watching it I just thought the same thing I felt at the end of the game. We turned the ball over far too easily. There were too many times where we won the ball and we gave the ball away, so that forces our shape to be to their offensive shape, which gives them the advantage. So we have to do a much better job of keeping the ball.”

On how they turn it around in the second leg at home) Read more »

The Sounders will have a training session in Tukwila this morning and then fly to Utah, where they will open there away-and-home aggregate-score series against Real Salt Lake on Saturday.

And that’s new. This is the third playoff appearance in Sounders history, but the first time they go in as the higher seed — and therefore the first time that they play away first and then play the deciding final 90 at home.

Everyone generally agrees that should be an advantage. But interestingly enough, it hasn’t played out that way for Salt Lake according to this note from the club:

RSL’s postseason and CONCACAF Champions League history indicates that Jason Kreis’ team actually prefers to host the first leg of a two-game, aggregate-goal, 180-minute series … In these situations, RSL is a perfect 3-0, advancing over Chivas USA (2008, MLS), Columbus Crew (2009, MLS) and Saprissa (2011, CCL) … When RSL owns the higher seed or by draw hosts the second leg, it boasts only a 1-2 mark, series losses against FC Dallas (2010, MLS) and Monterrey (2011, CCL) sandwiched around another series win over Columbus (2011, CCL)

Meanwhile, here’s what a few interested parties had to say:

RSL coach JASON KREIS “I really don’t know that I know the answer to that about who has Read more »

I’ve already had a few Sigi Schmid quotes scattered around the blog today — and there are more to come. But here are a couple of extras for now:

On how he measures a successful season) “We’ve had success this season. Certainly when you look at the parameters and compare it to the same stages as last year we’ve had success. For us, success right now, we want to do more in the playoffs than the last two years and so doing well is going to go a long way towards defining the success of our season.”

…

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The MLS playoffs kicked off last night with New York winning at Dallas, and for Sounders coach Sigi Schmid the take-away message was to buckle up because it could be a wild ride.

“You throw everything out the window,” he said. “Obviously the playoffs are all different. You’ve got the No. 10 seed knocking off the team with the fourth-best record. I thought New York played a very conservative game and stayed very deep and took away Dallas’ speed as a result of that, and Dallas just couldn’t quite capitalize on the opportinities they got. Some people are saying all …

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The Sounders have finished training for another day.

Coach Sigi Schmid was asked how Mauro Rosales’ is coming along from his knee injury.

“They did this thing called a platelet injection, which helps the healing process, speeds it along,” Schmid said. “But that causes a little bit of soreness for a couple of days. The expectation going today was OK, just have him ride the bike and walk a little but, but he was actually jogging. So that’s good. So we’ll see how he progresses.”

He also gave these health updates:

“Jaqua’s back full and into training. Carrasco was pretty …

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