Brian Schmetzer can be so unassuming and professorial at times, it seems hard to believe he is head coach of a professional soccer team. Pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, he tosses respectful bouquets at opposing coaches and players before and after games. Could this really be the shepherd of a championship squad?
Yes.
After years behind the scenes with the Seattle Sounders, Schmetzer has quietly taken Major League Soccer by storm. With a 3-1 victory over Toronto FC Sunday, Schmetzer’s Sounders won their second league trophy in four years. They have made three of the last four finals.
The Seattle native waving to thousands of fans in the Sounders victory parade in Seattle today played for the old Sounders, who played in the North American Soccer League, then coached the team when it was in the minor leagues. Through the Sounders’ first seven years in MLS, he was a mostly anonymous assistant under Sigi Schmid.
But when a bad early season slump, following years of playoff futility, cost Schmid his job midway through 2016, Schmetzer was provisionally given the reins. Few thought he’d keep the job past the season. Unlike most of the coaches at the pinnacle of MLS, he had never been a star, never coached in Europe, never been invited to guide the U.S. national team.
Instead, he surprised everyone, giving the players more leeway while at the same time instilling them with an urgency that resulted in a remarkable surge to the playoffs and an improbable MLS Cup.
Since then, Schmetzer has continued to give the Sounders a strategic edge and a steely resolve that carries them when the stakes are high. The Rave Green, like their coach, can sometimes appear underwhelming, with long stretches of mediocre play each of the last four years. But when autumn comes, and the leaves start to fall, so do the opponents.
Top players round into form. The supporting cast find their roles. And if Schmetzer is a professor, he is a demanding one, like John Houseman in “The Paper Chase.” After a bad half, Schmetzer frowns with barely contained frustration in interviews, while still carefully explaining what his team is doing wrong.
He understands the game and can help his players correct. The second half of games, like the second half of seasons, often go better for Sounders FC under Schmetzer.
This year, the Sounders overcame a mid-season stumble to finish second in the Western Conference. In a revamped playoff format, they tamed a powerful LAFC in its own building to reach the final. In front of 69,000 fans at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, the Rave Green survived a first-half onslaught from Toronto, then struck lethal blows on the counter-attack.
Schmetzer will talk about the leaders in the locker room, the fans and the club owners, and he’ll mean it. Nice guys do that. Fear not, Sounders fans. He’s the nice guy who finishes first.
