Training Camp Quotes from Sigi Schmid
With Training Camp opening today for Sounders FC, here are some quotes from Sigi Schmid…
(On finally getting out on the field…)
It’s tremendous to see some bodies on the field. You get tired of looking at things on paper, and shoving pieces of paper around, saying ‘how would this look like this, or like that?’ You actually get to see people out there, and then you see how people work together. Already there were a couple things I put down on paper, like this guy will player here, this guy will play here. And then on the field, you already saw them shift. So you see who is comfortable where. And even though you think you might be comfortable there, it shows right away by his play that he’s more comfortable some place else. All those things start to answer questions for you. I thought it was a good first day. No injuries. That was good too. And I thought everybody came through it very well.
(On non-roster invitees from USL Sounders…)
They’ve dedicated some good time to this city, and to the Sounders club in the USL. They wanted to make sure that they had an opportunity to show themselves. As you noticed today in practice, we really tried to mix the groups. It’s not like we kept sort of a group of guys, the guys that we got in the expansion draft together, or anything like that. We really want to mix it. We want to see how everybody played with each other, so that we can get a fair assessment of where players stood. And often times there’s players from the USL that are very close, and for one reason or another don’t make it. It’s a situation that they’re going to get a good look, and then we’ll make decisions next week.
(On comparing the Sounders FC operations to others in the past…)
I was talking a little bit after practice to Brad Evans, who obviously played with me in Columbus. And I said to him, ‘I know you’re coming from a championship team, so you might not have been too thrilled about getting picked up.’ He goes, ‘Sigi, man, everything so far has just been so different, so good.’ And when you hear that from a player that’s just coming from a championship team and he’s excited to be at this club, I think everything else around it has been tremendous right now. We’re still working out the kinks of the staff, understanding all of my little idiosyncrasies and all that good stuff. That happens, but I think the support from the ownership: from Joe Roth; from Adrian (Hanauer); from Vulcan and from Tod Leiweke and the Seahawks people have just been superb. It is what I hoped it to be, and I haven’t been disappointed. It’s definitely been the best situation I have been in my professional soccer time. We want to reward the support they’re giving us as soon as possible. That’s my objective as the coach, and that’s something that I’ll definitely hammer into the players. That there are a lot of good things happening here. We need to pay these people back as soon as possible. And the way you pay people back, the fans, and the owners and everybody else, is by getting wins.
(On day one here compared to day one in Columbus…)
Different because obviously it’s an expansion team. So you really are trying to see how things fit together. When you’re in day one at Columbus even the first season, you already knew what some of the players were. There was already a nucleus there. Same thing when I came into LA. Starting from scratch, it’s just a little bit different. There’s nobody that you can say, okay, these four guys have played together before so they understand each other. You have that a little bit with the Sounders USL guys, but obviously not from the guys coming in from other teams.
(On how long to realize what you have in an individual player…)
Well on some, it only takes a day. With some it takes a little bit longer. It’s basically a process. You sort of sit down each day. You make evaluations. You make assessments. And then you look at it the next day again, and you re-assess, or you confirm basically what you saw. You keep doing that over a period of time. I think it’s important in a camp to make decisions as soon as possible, because I think that’s better for everybody. As you can move forward as quickly as possible, it makes it better for the players because they know where they stand. As a staff, you can start honing in on what you are trying to do. But you can’t make decisions so quickly that you make mistakes. That’s going to be our task right now is to make decisions as quickly as possible, but to make sure we don’t make mistakes.
