Personal Thoughts on the Expansion Draft

Twenty-four hours ago, the Union was in the process of selecting their first players ever in the MLS expansion draft. Since then, Union fans and MLS followers have had ample opportunity to look over and discuss the ten chosen players.

I personally believe that it's difficult to draw any conclusions about a team's "competitiveness" solely on their choices in the expansion draft. As we saw as recently as last year with Seattle Sounders FC, the expansion draft is just the first of many avenues a new team will take advantage of to complete their starting roster (most of Seattle's starters did not come from the expansion draft). The Union front office is playing its cards close to its chest -- moreso than Seattle did -- so we don't know who else Philadelphia is interested in, or is in the process of acquiring (the trade to purchase goalkeeper Chris Seitz's rights from Real Salt Lake for allocation money and a promise not to draft any RSL players in the expansion draft has still not been officially announced).

What is clear is that Nowak wants to have a young core of players who are still developing and can potentially play in Philly for years to come (Zimmerman, Myrie, Seitz), balanced out with veterans who can be trusted to provide leadership in the locker room and influence the younger players with their good work ethic (Moreno, Thomas). The last thing he wanted to have to deal with were players who could become a locker room cancer (Guevara), or had nagging injury problems (Hejduk, Convey); not coincidentally, these players were among the bigger names in the unprotected pool, so Nowak is garnering a good bit of criticism for not selecting even one of them. One of the things Nowak said multiple times during his press conference yesterday was that his selections "would have a lot to prove." In other words, don't expect the players selected to form the nucleus of a championship team, but then that's not what the expansion draft is for.

Based on their contracts last year, the ten picks and Seitz made a combined $690,200. The MLS salary cap for each team in 2009 was $2.3 million plus an option for up to two "designated players", or DPs, whose salaries can mostly fall outside of the salary cap and be well above the maximum MLS salary (David Beckham's salary alone, for example, is more than twice that of his team's $2.3 million cap, but because he is a DP, only a portion of it counts against that cap). The current MLS CBA (collective bargaining agreement) ends January 31, 2010, and the salary cap is expected to go up to as much as $3-$4 million for the upcoming season, which would leave the Union plenty of room for the 13 additional players the Union's 24-man starting roster will contain. It's important to note that expansion teams have the right to renegotiate contracts with their picks, so finances likely played little role in who Philadelphia selected or didn't select.

In all, the Union took an unexpected path in who they picked in the expansion draft, but it's possible they could be reaping the benefits of it for years to come thanks in part to the promising youth that is now in their organization.