It’s Schmid’s Turn on the Grill
Even in the grim silence of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars’ interview room at Giants Stadium last Saturday evening, Bora Milutinovic found a way to lighten the mood.
The MetroStars had just been beaten, 1-0, by a Tampa Bay Mutiny team inspired by the unexpected addition of Carlos Valderrama, and the Meadowlands media were in a grumbling mood.
“Why had the team played so badly?” one reporter demanded.
“We need to think faster,” Milutinovic replied.
“Why had Colombian defender Arly Palacios not started?” asked another.
“The rules say you can only have 11 players,” Milutinovic deadpanned.
The twin pressures of coaching a so-so Major League Soccer team and the constant worry over the war in his native Yugoslavia are taking their toll on Milutinovic, whose MetroStars play the Galaxy tonight in Giants Stadium.
The former U.S. national coach looks worn down. There are dark rings under his eyes and he speaks not in his usual exuberant fashion but in a quiet, almost subdued voice. And the season is only five games old.
Still, Milutinovic has to keep up appearances, and at no time more so than tonight, when Sigi Schmid, one of his 1994 World Cup assistant coaches, is in town and on the opposing bench for his first game in charge of a professional team.
“I haven’t talked to Bora in two months, but I’m looking forward to seeing him again,” Schmid said this week.
“I know Bora well and we’ll talk before the game. . . . He doesn’t want to give away too much. . . . He wants to win and he’ll grab any [advantage] he can. . . . I learned a lot from him at World Cup ’94.”
The last time the coaches talked, Schmid was still the UCLA and U.S. Under-20 national team coach, about to take his U-20 team to Nigeria for the FIFA World Youth Championship. And since Milutinovic had coached Nigeria in the France ’98 World Cup, Schmid needed to know a bit more about the lay of the land.
As it turned out, Schmid’s U.S. team earned well-deserved victories over England and Cameroon and reached the second round. The teams it lost to, Japan and Spain, reached the final, with Spain winning the championship.
Only a few days after returning from Nigeria, Schmid accepted the Galaxy coaching position, replacing Octavio Zambrano. With less than a week at the helm, he has not yet had a chance to assess why the team is 3-3 and has scored only four goals.
“My first few days have been good except for driving the wrong way on the freeway [toward Westwood rather than the Rose Bowl],” Schmid said.
Since Schmid joined the league, MLS has added another new coach. On Wednesday, 1990 U.S. World Cup Coach Bob Gansler was named coach of the Kansas City Wizards, replacing Ron Newman.
The rapid turnover of MLS coaches--only one original coach, Dallas’ Dave Dir, remains from 1996 and the MetroStars alone have had four coaches--does not trouble Schmid, even though his 19 years of stability at UCLA are now only a memory.
“I know going in that one day I’m going to be fired,” he said on the eve of becoming Galaxy coach.
MLS Commissioner Doug Logan, who last week unilaterally moved the mop-headed Valderrama from the Miami Fusion to the Mutiny in order to end the bitter dispute between the Colombian midfielder and Fusion Coach Ivo Wortmann, said insecurity comes with the job.
“I was one of 12 second lieutenants who went to Vietnam and the only one to make it back, so that’s risky,” he said, making a rather strained comparison.
“All I can say is that coaching is a job where you experience great joys at great risk. . . . There is a compelling reason why talented people want to coach. . . . It is a job with great highs and great lows. . . . You find out right away whether you are any good. . . . It is an occupation not without risks.”
Milutinovic knows that all too well. Schmid will start to learn that lesson tonight.
