Galaxy days behind him, Sigi Schmid is happy to be home

It would be easy for Sigi Schmid to gloat these days.

No one would blame him for walking around with a self-satisfied smile, or even with the swagger that comes from having proved critics irrefutably wrong.

But that's not who Schmid is, and the former UCLA and Galaxy coach is simply enjoying the moment.

On Sunday, Schmid's Columbus Crew will play the New York Red Bulls in Major League Soccer's championship game at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

If the Crew wins, it will cap a remarkable season for the 55-year-old Schmid, who in three years rebuilt the Crew, coached it to the best record in the league this season and won MLS coach-of-the-year honors.

But while he is focused on Sunday's game, Schmid is looking forward just as much to Tuesday night and another soccer game. That's when UC Irvine will play either UCLA or Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in a second-round NCAA playoff game. Schmid's interest? The Anteaters, ranked seventh nationally, feature two of his sons, Kurt as an assistant coach and Kyle as a senior defender.

An Irvine-UCLA match would leave Schmid of two minds. He was the Bruins' coach for 19 years and won three NCAA titles.

And then came the Galaxy.

Schmid always believed he would last just as long, if not longer, with the MLS club. He saw himself as a sort of West Coast Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, spending the majority of his career with the same club, and said as much earlier this week.

"I grew up in Southern California and . . . I thought I would have a tenure at the Galaxy like Ferguson has had at Manchester United and Wenger has had at Arsenal," he said. "But that didn't happen. You can't look back."

Schmid coached the Galaxy for five-plus seasons, winning an MLS title, a U.S. Open Cup and a CONCACAF Champions Cup. The team was in first place when he was unexpectedly ousted late in the 2004 season.

"As a coach you know you're going to get fired, I guess," he said. "But the only thing that bothers me was the insinuation at the time that we didn't play attractive enough soccer, that we weren't offensive enough.

"That moniker was sort of hung on me, and that bothers me because at the time we were the highest-scoring team in the league."

Schmid's coaching philosophy has been built on defense, but with a purpose.

"We play good defense so that we can play good offense," he said. "You've got to have the ball in order to attack. If you don't play good defense, you're not going to get the ball."