Caught in Possession

Crikey…Is it Wednesday already? I am going to have to put an “Enter blog post now!” alarm buzz on my phone and set it to go off every few hours...I'll get the hang of this eventually, though...

Moooooooving right along, plenty of fallout and fodder from Friday’s SuperDraft. I’ll admit, I’ve only been to this event twice now, but I can definitely say it has a certain kind of staged but sincere atmosphere to it, not unlike a high school homecoming dance or a bachelor-party strip club expedition. To wit:

Over the past 12 years, Major League Soccer has grown more and more interconnected with the rest of the soccer world, while that wider world has itself only grown in size, depth and complexity. Many MLS clubs have actually ascended into the second or third tier of the international transfer market (recent example: buy from Argentinos Jrs., sell to Valerenga) and the league’s gradual loosening of its complex roster criteria is allowing increasingly adventurous forays (mainly into Latin American and the European fringe) in search of value and quality.

Meanwhile, the cute, parochial little enterprise that is NCAA soccer continues to chug along in a snowglobe of its own making, handing out laudable college experiences – and lamentably, an inherently limited soccer curriculum from a professional standpoint – to anyone that will play for credit hours instead of actual cash.

Those guys, especially those who actually get their degree, deserve a chance in the nation’s professional league even if they are all too likely to see their skills limited in some way or another by what you might call the NCAA ‘education trade-off.’ SuperDraft is their official welcome into the league – nowadays more of a tryout invitation than a contract offer, of course – and it deserves some dignity as a result.

I didn’t really realize this until long after the final pick had been made. Only when I transcribed my brief chat with Virginia Tech starlet Patrick Nyarko that I was able to really see past my cynicism regarding a draft pool that has been widely written off as thoroughly pedestrian.

Nyarko carries a stout reputation based on his exploits for the surging Hokies program, but he’s startlingly thin in build and speaks very softly with a mild accent lingering from a childhood spent in Ghana. Widely pegged as this year’s top selection, he somehow slipped to the seventh spot before the Chicago Fire snapped him up with their first pick.

“Easily one of the most important days in my life,” said Nyarko of the occasion. “I’m making the jump to pro soccer and it’s something that’s been on my mind for these last couple of months. To finally realize this dream is something out of this world, so I’m really excited about the new challenge.”

To get here, Nyarko has worked harder and traveled further than most of us can comprehend, and he is a prize product of the NCAA system. Yet he simultaneously represents the inevitable tug of globalization that threatens the SuperDraft’s self-anointed role as prime pipeline to MLS.

The worldwide circulation of footballing talent is steadily eroding what is left of the league’s well-intentioned, but protectionist, defenses and whether it’s via supplemental draft or Designated Player signing, interested and appropriate players are going to get here somehow. And why not welcome it? SuperDraft’s prominence will continue to fade as its lens captures an ever-smaller rectangle of the talent available to MLS clubs…but I’d rather celebrate the growth of the rectangle than curse the limits of the lens.

Comment posted by Charles Boehm @ 3:54 PM