If the day or so after MLS regular season ends is the dark period for potential employment blows involving the non-playoff teams, this week would be the equivalent for the foursome that dropped out over the last few days.
And that means we probably won’t need long to find out about Sigi Schmid in Seattle, one way or the other.
New York, Los Angeles and New England also fell off the playoff roster last week, but none of those managers are going anywhere. Mike Petke is surely disappointed in failing to advance in his first playoff series bid with the Red Bulls, but he did well enough to be feel reasonably safe this year. (Although it certainly was interesting that ESPN’s Alexi Lalas said Sunday night that, according to Petke himself, the Red Bulls manager was not signed for the 2014 season. That’s a different version than we heard from Red Bulls brass, so that deserves some monitoring.)
Bruce Arena in L.A. is as safe as they come. And Jay Heaps did well for himself in getting the Revolution into the playoffs in his second season as a professional coach. He’s not going anywhere.
So we come to Schmid, the only manager Seattle has had during its MLS days.
His time at CenturyLink certainly hasn’t been a bust. Not even close. But considering the tremendous expectations of that franchise, considering the club’s relative lack of playoff success, and considering a history of sketchy Designated Player performance, it’s hard to like the man’s chances of being around for a sixth season in charge.
The club has seemed to arrive onto a plateau … and that certainly is not lost on Seattle’s ambitious upper management.
As player contracts are mostly up at the end of this month, it makes sense to get this done quickly – if it’s going to happen, that is.
