Sounders Insider

Updates on news, views and developments of the South Sound soccer scene.

Contributors:

Don Ruiz joined The News Tribune in 1988 and has been covering sports since 1999. He is a long-time recreational soccer player and has covered the 1999 Women's World Cup championship game and a variety of international, national and local soccer matches. E-mail Don.

Jon Billings is the director of communications for the Tacoma Tide. He'll be providing news, notes and updates on the Tide. E-mail Jon.

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The News Tribune's soccer blog
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Posted by Don Ruiz @ 11:10:15 am

The Sounders are flying to D.C. today, so I'm not expecting any news out of them today.

So I thought it might be an appropriate time to take a look at three leftover quotes from Saturday's postgame comments that haven't gotten much attention so far.

Here's one from Sigi Schmid, explaining why Fredy Montero was pulled early in the second half: "We felt we needed to get a little more energy in there, a little more play. We didn’t think our balance was very good at the time."

Here's another from Schmid, when asked if the first-half/second-half difference vs. Tornonto and at other times during the season indicate a lack of self-starting players: "You’re an expansion team, you’re still going through growing pains; you’re still trying to find your identity when crisis hits. (Against Toronto) we didn’t get off to a good start, so it become who grabs the reigns of the team of horses right now and says this is the direction we have to go into. For sure that didn’t happen today. … It’s important that we sort it out. It’s important that guys understand that we need to sort it out within the team to play better. It’s not about talking to you guys and telling you guys that players’ jobs are on the line. That’s not the players’ job the players job is to go into the locker room and say that if he needs to. I think San Jose was one of those games, and we’ve had a few. Chicago in the first half was like that a little bit, I think Colorado in Colorado. But that’s part of growing pains, that’s part of learning, that’s part of now being able to develop that capability of where you’ve got one foot in the hole and another on the banana peel, who’s the guy that’s going to being the rope and make sure you don’t fall in."

And a final quote from Kasey Keller, sort of reacting to that second Schmid quote: "I heard part of the press conference when Sigi said it’s something we need to truly find what’s going to work and if it is going to hurt some people’s feelings, it’s tough."

All sort of interesting quotes. But all sort of seem to stop short of saying all that could be said.

Which brings us to the bottom line questions: Do you expect notable lineup changes soon? If so, what do you expect? And regardless of what you expect Sigi to do, what would you do?