Attackers go high in draft; fallen champ goes trade wild

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The wide eyes and pursed lips on the faces of the young men watching the giant video screens revealed anxiety moments before the 2001 MLS SuperDraft. Highlights of plays made by last year’s top picks were sharply choreographed to U2’s hit song, “Beautiful Day,” bringing the tension to its peak.

As Commissioner Don Garber then made opening remarks, players fidgeted in their seats. “OK, let’s do this,” one whispered.

The story of the draft was about to unfold, but its biggest newsmaker was already known – D.C. United.

Two days before the draft, the three-time MLS champions began a yard sale of veteran players that eventually left them with three first-round picks. Seven United players – Carlos Llamosa, Richie Williams, Jeff Agoos, Tom Presthus, Geoff Aunger, A.J. Wood and Antonio Otero – were all shipped to various locations in MLS.

When the dust settled, D.C. had selected six players in the draft and added three MLS veterans.

“Given that most teams kept the picks they had, Tampa Bay, Los Angeles and Dallas appeared to fare best in the draft.”

“We felt that we need to re-engineer our team a little bit,” United general manager Kevin Payne said. Llamosa, Agoos and Williams “are going to be harder – not easier – to trade next year because they’ll be a year older and more expensive. We felt that what we wanted to accomplish was to get … a young group together with some veterans that we could keep together for four or five years without having to ravage our team every year because of the salary cap.”

‘NOT A HOUSE-CLEANING.’ Payne also said he expects Ben Olsen will be transferred and wants to be prepared to spend money on the allocation it would receive as compensation.

Despite dissatisfaction expressed by some players with Coach Thomas Rongen after the team’s woeful 2000 campaign, Payne denied that the team targeted malcontents.

“Our intention was not to clean house,” Payne said. “That’s not what this is. Every one of these guys that are moving are really good professionals … I can’t help the fact that regardless of what I say factually, idiots who have no idea what actually is going on will voice their own opinions and those opinions will make it into the media. But we have nothing but great relations with the guys who moved and we’ll continue to have that.”

United’s deals bewildered many who wondered what the starting lineup might look like next season. Then, at around 12:30 a.m. Monday morning (Feb. 5), the league completed a deal with Ryan Nelsen, generally considered one of the top two players in college soccer along with UConn’s Chris Gbandi.

Nelsen, a member of the New Zealand national team and a dominant player at Stanford, was on trial with Grasshoppers in Switzerland when the club signed a striker instead of him on Sunday (Feb. 4).

“It was a very hard decision,” Nelsen said from Amsterdam, where he was arranging to retrieve his things from California and move to Washington. “Things had become uncertain here, and I didn’t want to wait another two or three months to figure things out because that can cost you … I think MLS will be a great place for me to play. The players are brilliant, the level is just as good as a lot of places [in Europe], but some people just don’t realize how good the league is.”

Some observers felt D.C. United received too much from San Jose in return for Agoos and that Payne and Rongen pressured their former colleague, Frank Yallop. Others believe D.C. now faces a long road to recovery.

“Time will tell on these things,” Payne said.

ABSENCE OF TRADES. With all the rumors swirling around during the three days prior to the draft, one surprise of draft day was the absence of major trades by teams other than D.C. United.

One reason was that players such as Cobi Jones, Brian McBride, Preki, Jason Bent, Andy Williams and Imad Baba were all in contractual limbo, and their respective teams wanted to resolve those issues before dealing.

Colorado, which admittedly had a greater number of needs than even San Jose, made just one move – acquiring Geoff Aunger from D.C.

“One of the reasons for me coming to Colorado was to put a more explosive attack together,” Rapids coach Tim Hankinson explained. “The concerns over some of the players who have been traded this weekend is that they eat up a lot of [salary] cap. It’s putting a lot of money into defensive areas that I’d rather save for offensive signings. Those offensive signings may have to be international players, discoveries or other things. … If they were offering me Cobi because they didn’t have cap room in L.A. or if [D.C.] were offering Moreno, then those are things we would have jumped at.”

Given that most teams kept the picks they had, Tampa Bay, Los Angeles and Dallas appeared to fare best in the draft.

Dallas did not fill its immediate need for wing midfielders, but instead took Bolivian international Joselito Vaca.

“For me, it was a fairly straightforward decision,” said Burn coach Mike Jeffries, who does not think Vaca should play wide. “We had a couple positions we really wanted to fill … the one exception was if Vaca was available. I think we have a good environment to bring him into … he is a very high-caliber player.”

‘SLEEPER’ SELECTIONS. In comparison with last year’s draft, this crop was far more offensively oriented in the early rounds. Last year four forwards were taken in the first two rounds, this year 11 of the first 24 picks were front-runners.

Another oddity was that the youngsters who do not count against teams’ rosters did not all go early. The draft makeup was very similar, in fact to last year’s. Thirteen “protected” players went in the first three rounds, compared to 14 last year. Six USL players were taken in the first three rounds; four last year. Four youth internationals, including three from Tahuichi, were not selected at all.

“I was a little surprised, especially with the roster size being cut down that the protected players didn’t go earlier,” Jeffries said. “This a young class, and a lot of the guys that are protected are going to take time to develop.”

Instead of picking protected players to pad their rosters, several teams went off the beaten path to find players that other teams did not know about.

Duncan Oughton was a relative unknown until the L.A. Galaxy invited him to the combine, where Columbus scooped him up with the 10th pick.

“One of the things he brings to the table that we really like is he’s aggressive,” Crew coach Tom Fitzgerald said. “He has a little bite to him and over the last year in a half, that’s something that we’re missing in Columbus.”

Soon after Oughton, Rodrigo Faria went to the MetroStars, Brian Ching to Los Angeles, Stephen Herdsman to Colorado and Ali Ngon to Miami. Ching and Ngon were not at the combine and Faria was unimpressive in the two games he played.

“Faria was here – I guess they say he played for two days, but I didn’t see him,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said. “He was down on the field, he walked around … Ching finished at Gonzaga and wasn’t selected for the all-star team … both of them are sort of sleeper picks. They were coy about theirs, and it worked.”

by Soccer America associate editor Will Kuhns