Real Salt Lake’s Kurt Schmid on MLS roster-building: From global shopping to the college draft – Soccer America

Kurt Schmid took Real Salt Lake’s Technical Director role in 2021 — after experience with the Seattle Sounders, the LA Galaxy and Inter Miami — to lead its leading scouting department in player identification and recruiting strategies. The club promoted Schmid to Sporting Director ahead of the 2024 season.

RSL is in a tight race atop the Western Conference standings with LAFC and the LA Galaxy, thanks to single-season club record 15-game undefeated streak. The run, which ended last week with a 1-0 loss to the LA Galaxy, is tied for second-longest in league history after FC Dallas’ 19-game streak in 2010.

We spoke with Schmid about the intricacies of MLS roster-building and its evolution.

SOCCER AMERICA: RSL has been MLS’s hottest team for much of the season. What was the ride like during the 15-game undefeated streak?

KURT SCHMID: Exciting. I think we tried to leave the talk of the run to everybody else — for us it’s just trying to go game to game. Win streaks are always better than unbeaten runs anyway — you get more points for wins. I’d rather lose one and win one than draw two.

I think the guys have just been really good about trusting the system, the game model, and continuing to be brave.

SA: Just how good is Chicho Arango? How much better does he make everyone else?

KURT SCHMID: I’ve been around since basically the beginning of the DP rule. On a basic level, if you’ve got your superstar buying into the system, the workrate, if he dies for the team? That goes a long, long way to making your team successful. If the guys look up to him and see how bought in he is, it really changes their mentality.

He’s been really great from that aspect. He’s doing the work off of the ball, both defensively and offensively. He’s a competitor and just wants to win and score goals.

Regardless of the position you’re playing, if you know you’ve got this outlet, this guy that can sort of bail us out if things get difficult, I think it really helps us make fewer mistakes. We play more free and with more confidence.

You could see that last year: we started to play really well last year before he even stepped on the field for a game — when he started training with us, everyone just saw what he could do, the quality that he had in training during the week — that raised our level on game day.

SA: In your experience in MLS, how often does the DP not buy into the team the way Chicho Arango has?

KURT SCHMID: I don’t have a number, but I’d say too many. It depends on how the team uses the DP and the type of player you target. I think there have been and are still a lot of players who come here from Europe and still look down on this league.

Maybe they think, ‘Oh, it’ll be easy, I just gotta do this, that, and I’ll be fine.’ Or like, Wayne Rooney‘s comment that he thought he could come to this league and play with a cigarette in his mouth. And it wasn’t that way.

On the one hand, the comments like that are positive because it says this league is harder than you thought it would be — but it’s also negative because that perception might still persist in Europe. Guys coming here from other leagues need to get here ready to work.

I think it usually works better when you’re signing DPs who fit in with what you’re trying to do rather than who they are. If you need a striker who can do x, y and z and you can sign a guy who can do those things. Great, let’s get him. Those guys usually work well.

But if you treat it like, ‘Well, here’s this guy who was playing at Real Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, or whatever; he’s got a big name he’ll sell some tickets, let’s get him!’ That works far, far, far less of the time.

You’ve got to find guys who fit your team and your system.

SA: In your current role with RSL, in what ways would you say have been most important in terms of optimizing this RSL roster?

KURT SCHMID: I’d say we’ve turned a lot over since we got here. When I got here we didn’t really have an owner. We spent a year with essentially the league running us. There was no additional spending so we kind of knew what we had to work with.

When new ownership came in, initially they wanted to take stock but them being smart guys they said, ‘Look, what are the efficiencies or inefficiencies in this league that we can exploit?

One of those was the draft. They put some resources into that and we’ve gotten a couple good players out of that in the last few years.

Another was the U-22 rule, where you can spend a decent chunk of change on a player and you only use $200,000 towards your cap. That’s where you can get an outsized ratio of quality relative to cap spend. So we used that for Braian Ojeda, Andres Gomez, Nelson Palacio, and now re-signing Diego Luna into that rule as well.

The last one is looking into the USL. There aren’t 100 of them in the league, but finding maybe the few players who have the right pedigree in that league to step up and make a different in ours.

It’s not about spending the most money in the league to get as much quality as we can and beat the piss out of everybody. It’s just about how can we be smart about this and exploit the inefficiencies to build a team that can punch above its weight.

SA: It’s known RSL has roster space for a Designated Player…what can you tell Soccer America about that? Is RSL going to double down with some big moves this summer?

KURT SCHMID: We’re going to hopefully make some moves and whether they’re big or not you guys can decide. We know we need a little more depth, maybe five or six guys of starting quality outside of the starting 11 to be a good team and to compete at the top of the league for the whole season.

You need three good players at two spots in the midfield — same thing at center back. You need two for one in the wide areas for some versatility. When I say depth, I don’t mean a backup, I mean someone who can compete for the starting position. That competition is good for the group and for the players themselves.

SA: Talk about what this run has done for your fanbase and the general feeling in the front office?

KURT SCHMID: The fans have been great for my whole time here but it definitely has been a tougher ticket to find over the last few months. They’ve been packing the stadium and the atmosphere has been off of the charts — the last few home games especially. There’s a buzz around the city, the team, and the club. It’s all super positive.

We have to find the balance: maybe Trey [Editor’s note: Trey Fitz-Gerald is RSL’s Vice President of Communications] will tell you that I’m the negative Nancy around here, and I don’t want to pour cold water over everything, but we have to keep a level head.

It’s only June, we’re halfway through the year, and this is the worst time to stop and pat yourself on the back. We want to feed off of the energy this creates and use it to get more positive results.

SA: Since you started as a scout/recruitment specialist over 10 years ago, what have you learned that’s made the biggest impact in your work?

KURT SCHMID: I think just — you learn little bits everywhere. What to look for in a player, or what to not do, in terms of how to organize or run things. Or being more structured. I think I’ve become a lot more structured in my approach.

I’ve added how I look at or use data, more and more. When I started in the league, our technology was that we had someone record onto DVDs every game they could find on DirecTV. So we just had binders of DVDs. Then Wyscout came, then data providers. All those things have served to give us broader reach. Now we can recruit from anywhere — whether we should or shouldn’t is a question, but we can.

It’s also about learning what leagues work well here. What positions in what leagues translate well here.

SA: What leagues and positions in certain leagues translate the best, in your experience?

KURT SCHMID: South America has proven to be successful. The league has kind of moved through and past the Central American leagues. Costa Rica and Honduras used to be places you could go and reliably find contributors to your team. Those leagues have kind of shifted to like, Paraguay, Uruguay, Colombia and Brazil sort of thing.

But this is a North American league, so we try to keep the balance right. We don’t want to have 25 guys from South America, necessarily. We try to have a good balance of American, European and Latin guys so that the mix and social groups in the team are right.

Most European leagues translate well but it just depends on the position. In Holland the best center backs who could play in MLS are so good that they play elsewhere. The guys who are left in that league aren’t the best fit physically. But maybe you can go to Colombia to fill that spot or an African country — maybe you don’t find a goalkeeper there that you would domestically or in Europe.

Playmakers usually come from South America or southern Europe. Though you do maybe get the occasional Scot in there as well.

SA: Describe your perfect soccer game?

KURT SCHMID: Ahh. I mean, I’m always rooting for chaos when I’m a neutral. Whether it’s LaLiga, Euros, I’m looking for lead changes, extra time, penalties, drama.

SA: How about your perfect RSL game?

KURT SCHMID: Oh man. When we win 10-0. When the game is so far in hand that we can relax. It takes me a big lead to get me to relax.

SA: If you could go back and change any result from any soccer game ever, what would it be and why?
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KURT SCHMID: Uhh. USA vs. Germany in the 2002 World Cup.