All right, let's do it. Let's talk a little with our friend, the head coach of Seattle Sounders, FC Bryan Schmitzer, coach. How you doing well? Good. I'm glad you're still calling me friend. I mean a lot of people have un Oh, I'll see. I don't do that. I don't do that. You're we're lifelong friends, Brian, lifelong lifelong friends, win, lose or draw. We are lifelong friends. Have you what's your weirdest injury story, either you or a player that you've had.
We just had Tariq Woolen. I mean, the only report is is that he injured a knee ligament the NITA Arthur scotic surgery walking on the practice field. That's what Adam Schefter's report was. We have nothing further than that right now. If you have any whacky injury stories, well not me personally. I mean, look, I had some injuries over the years, but nothing
that's too crazy. I don't know if any Sounders have you know, done anything crazy like walking down at Starfire from the locker room to the stadium. I don't know. Maybe I think maybe DeAndre Yedlin burned his hand with some hot oil or something. We might have had one story like that, but nothing. Nothing is dramatic as surgery required. Well that's good, that's good. Wait, how many do you believe? Because these are kind of the did he do it or didn't he do it? Okay, you know what
percentage do you believe the weird injury? Well, because it said practice field, I kind of believe it. Like if it was like, oh, I was walking to take the garbage out that table punched me, then I'd be like, yeah, we don't have evidence that you actually did that. But because it was on the practice field, I think it's probably probably yit. But coach, all right, let's let's get into it. Um too.
Nothing to Vancouver obviously a team that you had their number for a long, long, long time and now they're starting to fight back a little bit. So watching the film what happened in that loss was easy to watch the film in a lot of ways, Dick. I don't think it was, you know, one of our more stellar performances. You could still look there's a silver lining in every dark cloud. I would say there were a couple of positives. But at the end of the day, and I think I
told you in Softy the other day. I mean, I just don't like the fact that we're giving up the type of goals that we're given up. It's just, you know, the first goal. And look, we talked about it in the film session today, so I'm not saying anything that I hadn't said to Alex personally. But he stood up in the film session today and said, yeah, I should have done better on both goals, and you know, I credit him for saying that. But we all got to
be better. We all got to make plays, and you know, unfortunately those couple of plays were on the bad side. And then you know, we just haven't generated enough on offense to you know, to let them off the hook for sure. Well, what you have, though is because of your red hot start, you're kind of doing the opposite of what the Mariners have done. I mean, the Mariners have not provided themselves the ability to go through a slump in July and August because of how they played in April
and May. But you guys pocketed a whole lot of points at the beginning of the year. So despite this little slot, you're still in second place, only two points out of first behind LAFC. So that's got to feel pretty good. Well, it is somewhat of a saving grace. We obviously would have liked to play better. You know, that Kansas City game at home, the Austin game at home. I think those were games where we were disappointed. It's hard to win on the road. Vancouver, credit to
them. They're a better team than they have been in years past. I think they have a definite style of play that's actually similar to what we're going to face against the Red Bull and they've done a good job. So it's hard to play up there. Zakiani made an interesting comment during the broad cast during that Whitecaps game, and he said that when the Whitecaps scored that second goal, didn't even look like Seattle's players ever believed they could get back to
two two. He thought that he didn't see it in the body language that we've seen in the past from you guys, where you guys get down, you're like, hey, no worries, we got this thing. He didn't see that. Do you agree with Steve? Yeah? I might disagree with Steve a little bit. I think there's holders had shrugged a little bit, They went down a little bit, maybe some of the confidence went down, But you know, Cody Baker came on in the second half. I think
he was working Nico. They'll work, you know. I pulled Jordan just because it was this third match in eight days. I think some of those were heavy legs that he was looking at. Not that they didn't want to, but maybe they couldn't. And so, you know that's an issue with MLS and three games in a week, and you know, we as a coaching staff kind of talked about, Hey, how was our rotation for those
three games? Could we have done something better? Could we freshen our team for the third game in eight days, because you know, we've got a one thirty kickoff against our arch rivals at the end of a three game homestand right exactly and you know, one and four in the last five. I mean, you've been through slumps before. Is there a is there a tonic that you've used in the past to break out of slumps that you think you can use again. Yeah, just getting back to the basics. I thought
we were a really, really good defensive team early in the year. You know, we're scoring timely goals, not just okay, the four nothing at Sporting Case and a couple other you know, high scoring matches, but it was the timely goal, like the first goal to get us started, or it was a goal that happened right before halftime. You know, now those things are happening to us. I mean Vancouver, that goal that they scored
just before halftime, it was a gut punch. You know. We should have closed out the half, you know, made our adjustments, and then maybe the second half turns out a little bit different. But you know, it's a combination of things that we as a coaching staff are going over. Our soccer aficionado on the show, Jackson Felts is not here. He's feeling under the weather, but we thought we'd allow him to volley in a question
to you on this segment today. So I'm gonna I'm just gonna read this verbatim from Jackson, Okay, because this does not sound like my parlance at all. All Right. He says, both Austin last Wednesday and Vancouver un characteristically on Saturday played with a back five five defenders. What fits? Has that caused your attack? And how do you go about fixing being frustrated with
that look when you face it again? That's from Jackson. Yeah, well, they they they do have more numbers there in defense and the space is not as open, and so we talked about patients, we talked about moving teams from side to side to open up spaces and it's it's challenging at times when you play against the back five, but it's certainly doable. I think the players just need to believe. We need to We need to believe that we can, you know, create chances. And then you know, we
had a couple of looks in the game. We had some set pieces up in Vancouver, we had some decent chances against Austin, and you know, guy's got to make play. So we're working on our finishing this week. Deck. We're going to do a lot of shooting to make sure that the guys feel sharp and ready to go for the next three games. Well, and two of your best scores are still out, so let's get to that.
Raoul and Christian, what are their timelines? Raoul, I won't rule him out completely for the game, but he still has to do a couple of things. We've got a really hard training session tomorrow and so we'll see how he comes out of that. But unfortunately Christian, although he's doing more activity and they think they've found a possible solution to some of his ingering symptoms, but he will not be available for the Red bull game okay, and
facing New York this week. What stands out to you about him, Well, they had a new coach bump. So they lost a couple of weeks ago to the Philly Our Tribals. You know, it's a it's a it's a derby match for them and Gerald Struber, the old coach mutually parted, parted ways and the new coach a younger guy, and he's got a good resume. He's come up through the ranks and he's eager to show that he should be the long term coach for Red Bulls. So they're getting that new
coach bump. And it's a it's a good squad, it's a it's a workman like squad. They press, like I said, similar to Vancouver press high up the field. Got some good athletes. So it's a tough game. But they are dick right now. They're losing one nothing to Cincinnati in the Open Cup and they played a pretty good line. They played a first team lineup, so we'll see how much that pays into plays into Saturday's game.
Well, you kind of answered my last question with that game tonight, because a lot of times in those Open Cup games you don't play a first team lineup. So but that's a game that you will scout just as closely as you would scout an MLS game. Oh yeah, okay, I think all the coaches are watching it simultaneously, and you know, we'll pick what we can out of it. We'll certainly do the research for the three games before that that the new coach took over and see if we can't come up
with the right game plan. All right, you're getting one this week. I know that I can feel it on my bones. Coach, thanks for joining us. We'll talk you next week after big w all right, Dick, take care of Thank you. You bet. That's head coach Brian Schmetzer Seattle Sounders FC. They'll they'll take care of the Red Bulls. Red Bulls aren't pretty good. They're not very good. They're gonna lose to Night and they're gonna lose to the