Sigi Schmid is champing at the bit to get back into coaching. A return to MLS at some point seems to be in the cards, but he would not be opposed to going overseas.
In fact, he would love it.
In an interview with Alexi Lalas on the Mutant Gene podcast, Schmid confessed that he would like to follow Bob Bradley's path in Europe. Bradley recently became the first American head coach of a club in the English Premier League by taking over at Swansea City, and Schmid would certainly jump at the chance to do the same in another of Europe's top flights.
The long-time MLS manager, who was let go by the Seattle Sounders this summer, knows that that is unlikely to happen, however.
"I'd love to do that. I think what Bob is doing is fantastic, it's great for American coaches," said Schmid. "I would love to do that, but there's still this thing, stigma, lack of respect or whatever. I'm German-American and I speak German and I've got my passport and all that stuff, but there's no team in Germany that will hire me because they feel, 'Americans? Come on.'
"It's definitely, 'He doesn't know our league or he's never been around this environment.' Coaching in America, that's coaching in America. That's not coaching in Europe. Coaching is coaching. You can take a fantastic coach, man manager like [Gregg] Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs and I'm sure if you put him in charge of a soccer team, once he started to understand the soccer tactics he would become a very good coach because he's a good man manager. At the highest levels, that's what it's about. It's about man managing and it's about putting the right pieces of the puzzle together on the field."
Schmid talks about a number of other topics in the wide-ranging interview, including his former working relationship with Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey, the difficulties of dealing with travel in MLS, and his candidacy at 2017 MLS expansion teams Atlanta United and Minnesota United.
