By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Jan 17, 2012) US Soccer Players -- It's the dawn of another Major League Soccer draft, this time the Supplemental Draft that until recently was part of what made the SuperDraft super. Now, it's a Tuesday afternoon exercise in player selection minus the television coverage or live audience. So no 'you're not singing over there' or loud support of the team closest to the host city. Just teams on the phone making selections and then getting back to their training camp schedules.
Hardly as much fun as last Thursday, now is it?
Once again, we're mainly talking about college players, an extension of the entry draft but minus those two rounds of SuperDraft picks. Four more rounds are apparently necessary, bringing the grand total of players across both drafts to 119. Other than the potential for an empty ballroom and the media gorging themselves on boxed lunches and energy drinks late in the afternoon, one wonders why the drafts needed to be separated. At least everybody is in the same room in the SuperDraft setting, potentially facilitating trades.
That remains the biggest disappointment of the 2012 draft cycle. The big moves simply haven't been there, and that includes moving around veteran players who might have more left than the trading team realizes. With 19 teams in the League, the possibility of one or two moves changing a season is high. Major League Soccer's need for players on a limited budget squeezes the pool, at least in theory forcing teams to get creative. In practice? We haven't seen anywhere near as much as we should expect.
Maybe it's the timing. Teams are holding their rosters until the game start to count, and then we'll see the moves. Last season, the eventual League MVP was traded twice, ending up with a team that failed to make the playoffs. You would think the De Rosario scenario would have teams making moves earlier, using the luxury of training camp to integrate players into their setup. Instead, teams seem to be willing to hold onto players.
The biggest trade to come out of the SuperDraft was Portland sending Kenny Cooper to New York. How that works in practice is a much more open question than the commentators would have it seem. On an afternoon of scant movement between teams, the only significant trade has to become a major one. Had the Cooper move happened in May, it wouldn't get the same 'what if' scenarios. Cooper to New York certainly doesn't have the feel of potential major upgrade for the other team in MLS willing to spend serious money. It's a piece, and potentially a valuable one. So why aren't we seeing more of these sort of trades? And for that matter, what about the draft pick trades with teams using allocation money and their own picks to move around in the draft order?
Part of that is obvious from what happened over the two rounds of the SuperDraft. Taking LA Galaxy coach Bruce Arena's words at face value, his club was able to use the last pick of the draft on a player they had no expectation would fall that low. That's the major story from the 2012 draft, players sliding and teams seeming to not adjust their draft chart to compensate. So what should've been a slip of one or two places turned into considerable drops.
At least one read on that draft day phenomenon is that some clubs were so set on their picks they were taking that player if available. It didn't matter if a higher rated choice was still in play, the decision was already made. Like I wrote during the draft, that's nothing new in MLS. We've seen enough teams pick their list rather than adjust on the day to consider it a long-term trend. In no small part, that's the story leading into the next four rounds of the entry draft. Teams know who they want, that's at a premium, and the risky moves aren't necessary.
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