It's not easy to pull off the MLS version of the double. Just ask Dave Sarachan (Chicago Fire), Greg Andrulis (Columbus Crew), Dominic Kinnear (San Jose Earthquakes) and Tom Soehn (D.C. United). They coached teams in recent years that accrued the most points during the regular season en route to the Supporters' Shield, but failed to win MLS Cup.
The last team to accomplish that feat? Way back in 2002, when the Los Angeles Galaxy captured the regular-season title and their second MLS title.
Sigi Schmid was the coach of that team, the man who directed the Crew to the Supporters' Shield this season. So, he knows a thing or two about winning the double. And if the Crew manage to parade around The Home Depot Center with the new Philip F. Anschutz Trophy after MLS Cup 2008, Schmid would become the first coach to pull off that accomplishment twice.
"It's a great honor because anywhere else in the world you would be the league champion at this stage and you would have it wrapped up," Schmid said. "In our league [there is a] cup competition at the end of the year.
"The Supporters' Shield proves over 30 games you are the best team, especially where we've come from in the last couple of years. To be able to accomplish that this year is something that I know the players are very proud of and the organization is very proud of."
Winning the league and the MLS Cup Playoffs are essentially trying to bag two different animals. Over the long haul of a 30-game season, the winning team is awarded for its consistency. In the short run of a four-game playoffs that is played over three weeks, the hot team at the time can win, which is not necessarily the best team for the entire season. That's the way sports are in North America.
"A lot of times the team that secures the Supporters' Shield, as we did this year, with a couple of games to spare," Schmid said. "As a result, even though you don't want to, subconsciously, the foot goes off the gas pedal a little bit. So the teams that are fighting to get into the playoffs just get into a rhythm and sometimes you run into that team that has had to play for the last three or four weeks and they're in a real tough state of mental mindset and focused. Now you're trying to regain your focus a little bit. If you don't catch a break here and there, all of a sudden you find yourself out."
With a shorter season in the playoffs, one loss, one mistake at the worst time can doom a team's championship quest. And then there's MLS' parity.
"The only thing is that it's a one-off," Schmid said. "Our league has a lot of parity. When you look at the top five or six teams in the league, on any given day, any of them can beat anybody. When you get into a playoff situation, an old English coach said to me, 'The FA Cup or Open Cup is like Fantasy Island. Everybody's dream can true.' Once you enter a cup competition at the end of a season, if a team gets hot, if they find a hot player at the right time, all of a sudden they're winning and they're playing for championships. And the team that was more consistent is out because it is a one-off type of game."
As a veteran MLS coach and having been through the Supporters' Shield, Schmid has learned from his and other's experiences. He gave several players on his team the game off on the penultimate weekend of the regular season in what turned into a 3-1 loss at the New York Red Bulls. For last Saturday's 1-0 home win against D.C. United, Schmid primed his team as though it was a playoff encounter. It worked.
"I could have stood on my head," he said of the Red Bulls game. "I wasn't trying to get my guys as motivated as they would be if they were playing for the playoffs. It was silly to try that. We had some guys with a few knocks and we were going to go play a game on [artificial turf], which is not the best surface to play on. We had some guys who play in midweek internationals. So it just made sense to basically to allow those guys to rest a little bit."
That Schmid and the Crew were in a position to be the best regular-season side in MLS and to win the MLS Cup is a testament to the patience of the Hunt family, the owners of the team. The Crew missed the playoffs for three consecutive seasons, including the last two under Schmid. For most coaches in the league, that would mean a pink slip and a quick exit.
"The Hunts were very patient with me," Schmid said. "The first year I remember telling my wife, that all the good fortune I had all over the years at UCLA and with the Galaxy everything came back in one year as bad luck. In that first year I never had as many injuries on a team that I have coached. It was a phenomenal amount of guys. It was far beyond what teams are experiencing this year. The second year I felt we were close. We were happy where we were preseason, Then we just got out of the gate slow. We recovered, but obviously we did not recover enough. That year there was a turning point our game in Kansas City. If we had won that game, we would have been OK. In retrospect, that disappointment turned into a plus for this year because the team knew we were good enough to be in the playoffs last year, but we gave it away and spent a lot of time talking about that.
"The Hunts ... gave us an opportunity to build the team. I think along the way, I think they saw we were trying to do the right things and the pieces we were putting together were correct. And we weren't trying to do it on a hit-and-miss strategy. We weren't trying to do this and this and see if it works. We stayed true to our plan to try to build a nucleus from there of a good players, to build a nucleus of younger players, to add some key veteran players. We stayed with the plan and now we were bearing the fruits of it."
So, after finishing at the top of the heap, ahead of 13 other teams with a 17-7-6 record and 57 points, did Schmid think the Crew would be this good? He knew Columbus would be a playoff team.
"Did I feel we would win the Supporters' Shield? I can't say 100 percent for sure going into the season we would win the Supporters' Shield," he said. "I also felt we were going to be a playoff team and we weren't going to get into the playoffs by the back door. I felt very confident that we had enough talent. I think we showed that at the end of last year with the games we had played. It was just a matter of building upon that."
Prior to the season, except for the most optimistic Crew supporter, not many fans, media or soccer observers gave Columbus much chance of qualifying for the postseason, let alone being a dominant team. Schmid wasn't going to gloat over his team's success.
"I mean, fans are fans and that's what they do," Schmid said. "When a team is playing well, they're going to be there and be there for you. When a team is struggling, they're going to be very critical. That's just part of it. The hardcore fans that we have are pretty loyal and true to the team. The skeptics out there and the press, a lot of people predicted us last in the division and didn't think we had improved ourselves and all of those things. I knew we had a good team at the end of last year. We had to improve in a couple of areas. We did that with Brian Carroll and Gino Padula. I knew that if the team would get off to a good start, the team gained confidence and we'd be OK. I think everybody on the team was very satisfied and were happy to prove all those critics wrong."
While a number of players have enjoyed very good or career seasons, there is usually one player that stands out on a successful or championship team. It's no surprise to Schmid that Argentinean midfielder Guillermo Barros Schelotto, an MVP finalist, was the key to the Crew.
"Guillermo is a tremendous competitor," Schmid said. "He knows when the lights go on and he knows when the crowd shows up. He knows when it's time to perform. He might not be as good in rehearsal, but he knows when it's time to perform. So that's certainly been an important element to our team. The other aspect to Guillermo, him being here all season, and having Alejandro [Moreno] here from the beginning, the guys know what their roles are. Alejandro knows what his job is, Guillermo knows what his job is. [Robbie] Rogers, [Eddie] Gaven, everybody knows what their job is as it relates to each other. And that comes from being able to play as a unit and understanding Guillermo.
"There's a lot of little things. Today at practice when they were jogging, it's Guillermo, Gino Padula and Robbie Rogers. And they're talking the whole time. He's not demonstrative where you see him pointing and waving and going over and here's how you need to play. He's been very good, especially with Robbie and some of the young guys, dropping a word there and saying, 'Hey, when you do this, this is what you need to do. When you see me have the ball here, just go and I'll find you.' And being able to coordinate those things with them. That has helped our team as well. He certainly is an more important part of our team because the guys seem now pretty thoroughly how to play with him."
Not surprisingly, Schmid likes his team to win it all.
"Because we've just been team that's got a pretty even keel all year," he said. "We haven't gotten too high and we haven't gotten too low. We had a good streak to begin the year. We had a good streak to end the year. The guys kept putting it away during those streaks. In the middle of the season there was a 10-game run where some people became concerned, but the team never became concerned."
Schmid felt his team gave a consistent effort game in and game out, its longest league losing streak three games (though there was an Open Cup victory in between). And, there was the versatility they showed.
"The other thing is we've won games different ways. We've won games in shootouts, like against Chivas, 4-3. Or like when we came back against Kansas City and tied, 3-3, after being down, 2-0. We've also won games when we're playing a man down against the Colorado Rapids and we're basically doing the Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope," he said. "They found different ways to win games, which is also a good sign."
Schmid remembered showing his UCLA team tapes of the Italian Serie A powerhouse A.C. Milan during the Marco van Basten era nearly two decades ago. The first game was a 5-3 victory.
"It was like soccer from heaven," he said. "It was so artistic, so offensive, so free-flowing. It was great. And in next game there was their 1-0 win over Inter. It was the biggest dogfight and kick-fest you've ever watched. I said there's a great team because of whatever was needed they knew how to win."
Starting against the Kansas City Wizards in the Eastern Conference semifinals on Saturday, we'll see if the Crew will continue their very fine regular season and see if the team knows how to win in the playoffs.
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