Monday, June 2, 2008

Sigi tempts fate

Sigi Schmid is straightfoward, even a bit sarcastic at times, and that's not a bad thing.

Still, while no MLS coach likes to lose his players for international duty, I'm not sure I understand the point by Sigi grousing about Frankie Hejduk's travel for the USMNT.

"Maybe he should get a groin pull. Isn't there another U.S. player with a groin pull? Maybe he's going to get a groin pull soon."

Does he think Donovan is somehow faking a groin injury and flying around to Europe and the U.S. for fun? It's not as if he played for the Galaxy, either. He's also skipping the Spain match and may not play versus Argentina.

As much as some will bewail that Donovan is missing both England and Spain, it's actually more important that he be healthy for qualifiers. Groin injuries are tricky things, often difficult to heal. Hopefully, Schmid hasn't brought on any karmic malady on Frankie by suggesting a groin pull is an easy thing to deal with.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like Sigi's frankness, but I thought the same thing about the references to LD's imjury. Sigi's either confused or a classless on this one - I mean the guy is missing games for club and country, watching his teams lose miserably without him, and logging thousands of air miles to do it. Good idea to wish that on Hejduk, coach.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, this is the left hand whining in the hopes that we don't notice that the right hand got outplayed and outcoached in its last game.

On a vaguely related note (more related than Columbus' tanking and Donovan's groin, anyway), I've always been annoyed at how often managers get to use their press conferences to criticize everybody else. I keep thinking that if a manager is going to criticize the refs, it would be fun to let the refs get an equal amount of time to slag off the manager. I'd enjoy watching referees critique Alex Ferguson's line-ups or sentence structure.

I mean, it's a terrible idea, but it would amuse me.

Anonymous said...

I think it's more showing how much Sigi just hates the LA Galaxy. You'll notice further up in the column he's bemoaning that Robbie Rogers doesn't get the special treatment that some Galaxy players receive (hint, hint: Becks and Landon) and that he hasn't learned to "embellish" getting hit.

Funny, did Sigi have a problem when he was coaching Ruiz?

So whether it's a dig at Landon personally or a general disdain for the Galaxy - it's a jerk thing to do. He should apologize to Donovan for his absurd insinuation.

And does he really think Frankie is not absolutely thrilled to be called in? He'd probably be the first one to tell Sigi to shut up.

Anonymous said...

In addition, Sigi didn't seem to have a problem with Schelotto "imbellishing" - which is putting it mildly; Donovan may have imbellished but he was fouled on the PK - vs. Toronto.

A.C. said...

I think you mean the PK versus Kansas City, no?
I do think that Sigi's comments about calling the ref's attention to fouls was directed at Landon and Ruiz - not Becks, actually. Becks isn't really in the box often enough to draw crucial fouls. It's true that Sigi never wanted to leave LA, and there is probably some residual bitterness at the team, but except for Ruiz, hardly anyone with LA was there back in Sigi's day. He was probably just really upset at the latest loss for Columbus.