When a team is playing poorly, it seems as though every decision a coach makes is wrong. Conversely, when a team is playing well, it’s as if every move they make is almost preordained to work perfectly.
Over the past few weeks, Seattle Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer can seemingly do no wrong. His management of the Sounders’ most recent three-game week was a particular masterclass.
Less than 72 hours after the Sounders beat the New England Revolution on Saturday, he made four changes for the U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal match against the Sacramento Republic. Even he admitted that there was an inclination to make more moves, but his instinct to go with mostly first-choice starters was key to securing advancement.
The flipside of that gamble was needing to rotate a bit more heavily for the weekend game Austin FC, which had the potential to be significantly trickier. Not only was the game at Austin — a very good home team — but they’re one of the teams fighting the Sounders for playoff positioning. It was a classic six-pointer in terms of stakes.
Again, Schmetzer pushed all the right buttons. His starting lineup featured seven changes from the Sacramento game — but just three different players from the Revolution match — which was strong enough to get the Sounders to halftime tied. He then inserted Albert Rusnák and Jordan Morris, and both proved key to delivering the 1-0 win.
“I was going to make a few more changes but decided against it,” Schmetzer said in the postgame press conference. “We need to collect points.
“Our sports science guys do a great job getting guys ready to play. The whole team had a really awesome performance.”
Not only did Morris score the game’s only goal — his ninth in the last 11 games across all competitions — but he also drew two yellow cards on centerback Brendan Hines-Ike that allowed the Sounders to play the final 13 minutes with a man advantage. Rusnák’s contributions weren’t quite as obvious, but he was influential in allowing the Sounders to be much more dangerous in the second half than they were in the first, set up Léo Chú for one golden chance and then rang the crossbar with a nearly perfect free kick that would have made it 2-0.
Both players also helped the Sounders play a bit more aggressively, increasing their number of touches in the Austin penalty area from three in the first half to 10 in the second half and nearly doubling the number of passes in Austin’s end from the first half to the second. Schmetzer confirmed that the Sounders also moved up their line of confrontation in the second half, pressing more like they normally do at home after mostly absorbing pressure in the first half.
“We have a deep team and we’ve seen guys coming off the bench to have an impact,” Morris said. “Watching the first half, the guys did a good job and I was seeing places to exploit. The longer it stayed 0-0 they were going to keep pushing and we’d be able to create chances.”
Through the three games, Schmetzer used 18 different starters with only Yeimar Gomez-Andrade, Paul Rothrock and, most surpringly, João Paulo starting all of them. There were 21 players who got onto the field. Each of them seemed to perfectly understand the role they were asked to play and delivered.
The schedule doesn’t let up for at least two more games, but fixture congestion seems to be bringing out the best in the Sounders.
It’s a far cry from the start of the year when no matter what Schmetzer tried, it seemed to backfire. To some degree, that’s a commentary and the effect that improved health can have, but the coaching staff deserves some credit, too. They’ve shown a willingness to elevate a player like Rothrock from a complete afterthought into an every game player; they’re willing to trust a veteran like João Paulo to know his body; they’ve seemingly convinced players like Raúl Ruidíaz and Alex Roldan to embrace more limited roles.
“The players are the same, they’re just executing better,” Schmetzer said. “We have a good squad, they believe they can win. The coaches have been doing a good job of saying what we want and the players have been delivering.”
