2007 MLS Draft...a Review...part I...
Friday, January 12th 2007, MLS held their annual college draft. Each year the league uses the event to make announcements and refocus American soccer fans on their national top flight soccer league. Some years there is more news surrounding the draft then others. For example, when Freddy Adu joined the league and was selected first overall by DC United in 2004, there was a lot of media attention on the draft and MLS that had never been there in the past. Three years on and another player signing stole the show leading up to the draft...David Beckham. No, he has nothing to do with the actual draft, and in many ways he completely and totally over shadowed the draft, but his signing helped people take note and remember, "There is a professional soccer league in the US."
The buzz created by Beckham's signing certainly got my juices flowing even more for the draft. For example, each time LA picked another player I thought to myself, "Ohhh, he'll do well learning from Beckham." So who were the lucky LA draftees?
Robbie Findley - F - Oregon State
Josh Tudela - M - Indiana
Ty Harden - D - Washington
Tally Hall - GK - San Diego State
Bobby Burling - F - Loyola Marymount
I am sure they are all excited about the prospects of playing with such a strong, International player. No matter what you think of Beckham's current level of play, there is no denying he is the most recognized soccer player in the world today...up there with Pele and Diego Maradona at their peaks of notoriety.
Like the title says, this is a review of the 2007 MLS SuperDraft...not a gushing about Becks post....so on with the show. I am not going to try to rank the draft class because as many people have pointed out, player potential isn't known until we see them on the field against professional level players. This isn't the NFL where special players are on display before the draft on a weekly basis for the entire country to watch play College Football. The gems are much harder to see in the MLS Draft.
Going into the draft I picked LA and Colorado as the two teams who I thought could really make some waves in the draft base on the number of total picks and the number of picks in the first three round, where most of the talent is picked. What does LA do? They trade the #5 pick to New England for a portion of the Dempsey allocation and the #10 pick to Toronto for a partial allocation. With the 16th pick they got the 3rd Degree top rated forward in Findley. I wonder if those allocations were necessary to sign Beckham or if LA has another foreign import in their plans. Whatever the case, LA clearly decided to foregoe possible stars of tomorrow for star power today...and I don't blame them.
Colorado had major defensive issues and this off-season has been a time to address them. So far the Rapids have brought Ugo Ihemelu, Brandon Prideaux and added Greg Vanney in a draft pick swap with Dallas. Colorado had two 2nd round picks in a row so they decided to give one up for a proven talent. Good move in my opinion because the odds are very low that the 18th overall pick would have produced a left back of Vanney's quality and experience. With the picks Colorado kept they stole the top Combine prospect, M - Greg Dalby, with the 17th pick. Rumor is that Dalby is looking for a large contract and is basically holding out. If the Rapids can convince him to stay, good selection. If not, they took a calculated risk and lost. Dane Richards
and Corey Ashe remained on the board and could have helped the Rapids...however the team took their risk that will either look genius or terrible in a year's time. With the #6 pick the team drafted a great GA talent in Nico Colaluca. I am hopeful that he will work out well for the team learning from gifted crosser Terry Cooke.
Toronto had a decent hand delt to them but they only came into the day with 3 picks. The 1st overall is obviously a strong starting position but by adding the 10th pick they were able to select a strong defender, Andrew Boyens. In my opinion that move, along with selecting Maurice Edu and Canadian forward Jeff Gonsalves gave FCT a strong draft class. They really improved a poor situation by trading up and then got lucky finding Gonsalves still available at #40.
New York had two picks...they didn't have a lot of room to move and they took two attackers in Dane Richards and Sinisa Ubiparipovic. Since the Red Bulls are getting their midfield help from the signing of Claudio Reyna, they did what they could. However, Richards is not an American and does not have his green card to my knowledge. So they added a international player at the same time they're trying to sign big name foreign stars. This may bite them in a couple years.
New England made a shocking move to me by trading up to the #5 position and then selecting Wells Thompson from Wake. Steve Nicol is a good talent judge so I hope for his sake he was right. However many pundits saw Thompson still being available later in the first or second round. Grabbing Amaechi Igwe with their next pick was a great move. The US U-20 and GA player has a lot of potential. Ryan Solle was another midfielder taken by the Revs who must be hoping one of these prospects will grow into another Clint Dempsey....that is a long shot.
The buzz created by Beckham's signing certainly got my juices flowing even more for the draft. For example, each time LA picked another player I thought to myself, "Ohhh, he'll do well learning from Beckham." So who were the lucky LA draftees?
Robbie Findley - F - Oregon State
Josh Tudela - M - Indiana
Ty Harden - D - Washington
Tally Hall - GK - San Diego State
Bobby Burling - F - Loyola Marymount
I am sure they are all excited about the prospects of playing with such a strong, International player. No matter what you think of Beckham's current level of play, there is no denying he is the most recognized soccer player in the world today...up there with Pele and Diego Maradona at their peaks of notoriety.
Like the title says, this is a review of the 2007 MLS SuperDraft...not a gushing about Becks post....so on with the show. I am not going to try to rank the draft class because as many people have pointed out, player potential isn't known until we see them on the field against professional level players. This isn't the NFL where special players are on display before the draft on a weekly basis for the entire country to watch play College Football. The gems are much harder to see in the MLS Draft.
Going into the draft I picked LA and Colorado as the two teams who I thought could really make some waves in the draft base on the number of total picks and the number of picks in the first three round, where most of the talent is picked. What does LA do? They trade the #5 pick to New England for a portion of the Dempsey allocation and the #10 pick to Toronto for a partial allocation. With the 16th pick they got the 3rd Degree top rated forward in Findley. I wonder if those allocations were necessary to sign Beckham or if LA has another foreign import in their plans. Whatever the case, LA clearly decided to foregoe possible stars of tomorrow for star power today...and I don't blame them.
Colorado had major defensive issues and this off-season has been a time to address them. So far the Rapids have brought Ugo Ihemelu, Brandon Prideaux and added Greg Vanney in a draft pick swap with Dallas. Colorado had two 2nd round picks in a row so they decided to give one up for a proven talent. Good move in my opinion because the odds are very low that the 18th overall pick would have produced a left back of Vanney's quality and experience. With the picks Colorado kept they stole the top Combine prospect, M - Greg Dalby, with the 17th pick. Rumor is that Dalby is looking for a large contract and is basically holding out. If the Rapids can convince him to stay, good selection. If not, they took a calculated risk and lost. Dane Richards
and Corey Ashe remained on the board and could have helped the Rapids...however the team took their risk that will either look genius or terrible in a year's time. With the #6 pick the team drafted a great GA talent in Nico Colaluca. I am hopeful that he will work out well for the team learning from gifted crosser Terry Cooke.
Toronto had a decent hand delt to them but they only came into the day with 3 picks. The 1st overall is obviously a strong starting position but by adding the 10th pick they were able to select a strong defender, Andrew Boyens. In my opinion that move, along with selecting Maurice Edu and Canadian forward Jeff Gonsalves gave FCT a strong draft class. They really improved a poor situation by trading up and then got lucky finding Gonsalves still available at #40.
New York had two picks...they didn't have a lot of room to move and they took two attackers in Dane Richards and Sinisa Ubiparipovic. Since the Red Bulls are getting their midfield help from the signing of Claudio Reyna, they did what they could. However, Richards is not an American and does not have his green card to my knowledge. So they added a international player at the same time they're trying to sign big name foreign stars. This may bite them in a couple years.
New England made a shocking move to me by trading up to the #5 position and then selecting Wells Thompson from Wake. Steve Nicol is a good talent judge so I hope for his sake he was right. However many pundits saw Thompson still being available later in the first or second round. Grabbing Amaechi Igwe with their next pick was a great move. The US U-20 and GA player has a lot of potential. Ryan Solle was another midfielder taken by the Revs who must be hoping one of these prospects will grow into another Clint Dempsey....that is a long shot.
posted by Bonji at
3:02 PM
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