The MLS SuperDraft concludes on Monday with draft grades being handed out to every team and winners and losers pieces being crafted. Remember, they mean absolutely nothing.
The MLS SuperDraft is dominating the Major League Soccer discussion. As it should. It is the major event happening at this point in the year, with many clubs’ offseasons slowing a little as their general managers turn their attention to the SuperDraft.
Other than the U.S. Men’s National Team January camp and the normal rhythms of the MLS offseason, there is not that much going on in the world of U.S. soccer at present.
As a result, media outlets, who are now tasked with producing all year round must cover the draft with an attempt to make it exciting and impactful. While it is a great day for the kids being selected, as many of their interviews illustrated on Friday, for the clubs and the league, the consequences are minimal.
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Not only are they minimal, but they are also extremely difficult to predict. As with any sport, the development of youth is a turbulent and tempestuous affair. Those with great talent and production as a teenager do not always translate to the senior level; there are late developers who only come good in the 20s. And so, as mlssoccer.com, USA Today, ESPN and us here at MLS Multiplex cover the SuperDraft, we are really doing an impossible job.
The inevitable pieces on draft grades for the different, the winners and losers of the draft, a piece that John Caroll wrote here after day one, are all produced and published without much clue of what the draft grade should or shouldn’t be or who the winners and losers are or are not. John did a great job with his winners and losers piece, but, ultimately, the organisations that are winners and losers are winners and losers because he deems them to be.
And that is the case with all of the reactionary pieces that are produced as a result of the MLS SuperDraft. It is merely the opinion of the writer that defines the grade that a team is given or a pick is praised or a trade is criticised.
Now, this is to demean those pieces. We have published them here. It is merely to say that no one really knows what is going to happen in the future, and rarely is that more applicable than with the draft and predicting the career trajectories of the young players that are selected and the impact that they will have on their teams and the league.
The draft is a crap-shoot. It is the same in all sports. Even in global football leagues that do not have drafts, there are young players that buck the prediction, in both a positive and negative way. Remember Freddy Adu? And so, any piece writing about the consequences of these picks is somewhat futile.
So, draft grades, winners and losers. They all mean nothing. Now that that’s said, I am going to go and read all about who won day one of the SuperDraft, because I don’t care if it means nothing or something. It’s still fun to write and read.