So these drafts then. What are they?
Drafts are a system used across a wide range of major US sports - though virtually unheard of outside of the USA - for allocating players to a team. As America has far less club involvement in developing young players than in many parts of the globe, and due to the way that contracts with players are technically held by the league itself, not the individual clubs, this has engendered a situation where each club frequently needs to refresh its line-up of "squad players" - those players who are not the club's stars but instead are rising talents making their breakthrough or are journeyman players who are there to fill in gaps in the squad and support the first-choice players. The draft system serves to let every club top up its squad in a simple, practical and cheap way.
So how do they work?
The format of the draft is, in principle, fairly straightforward. Before the draft begins, there will be a pool of players, all known to the clubs involved. Each club is given an equal amount of picks, though clubs are allowed to exercise a "pass" and waive their chance to pick a player - any club which exercises a pass is considered to have concluded business and may not rejoin the player selection later in the draft. A notable exception is the Expansion Draft, which can only be entered by brand new franchises, and which I will return to later.
Obviously, picks can only be made one at a time. That means teams have to be given an order of precedence in their picks. This isn't random - in order to balance up the league to a degree, the teams which performed worst in the previous season are given priority the following season. The order goes:
1) Teams which didn't qualify for the MLS Cup knock-outs the previous season
2) Teams knocked out in the MLS Cup knock-out round
3) Teams knocked out in the MLS Cup conference semi-finals
4) Teams knocked out in the MLS Cup conference finals
5) The MLS Cup runner-up
6) The MLS Cup winner
For tiers 1-4, where there are multiple teams for each tier, teams are ordered by points scored the previous season, with the lowest points always receiving preference.
With the order determined, and possible player picks scouted and reviewed, the teams sit down, wait their turns, and choose one player every round until either all the rounds are finished, or every pickable player has been drafted or rejected, depending on the draft. Those players will then join their new teams for the start of the upcoming season.
But I heard some clubs got two picks in one round last time?
This is true. While the teams are ordered by performance last season, they are allowed to trade their picks with other teams. They can trade them for other picks in the same draft - not necessarily for the same season - picks in other drafts, wage cap allocation money or for other players. Trades can even be conditional, depending on future performance (and therefore, team pick ranking). This means some teams can end up with multiple picks in the same round.
So what are the different drafts, then?
There have been a number of different drafts in the past, though arguably only four are considered "active" now. They are as follows:
The SuperDraft:
This is the big one each season - the one that attracts the most publicity and draws the most excitement from the fans. The SuperDraft technically has four rounds and allows clubs to select a mixture of the top college talents, Generation Adidas professional youths, academy drop-outs and pro players from the USL, though occasionally part of this pick is split off into a Supplemental Draft (see below). This is each club's most notable way of sourcing the very best youngsters to break through into senior football, though in recent years the rise of European-style academies has placed less importance on the SuperDraft compared to developing talent through the club system.
The SuperDraft typically takes place in mid-January, and is the harbinger of the new season.
The Supplemental Draft:
Kid brother to the SuperDraft, the Supplemental Draft is essentially for players who have passed the point of eligibility as a college pick, and usually are already playing for local teams having left their university. The Supplemental Draft exists in parallel with the SuperDraft, being used when MLS chooses to split the college players from those outside the college system, and was in fact not run in 2014, though considering the Supplemental Draft has already been done away with on no fewer than three times in the last twenty seasons, we may well see its return again soon.
In recent years the Supplemental Draft has run over four, or occasionally three, rounds, and when it is run the SuperDraft tends to be shortened to only two rounds. It takes place around a week after the SuperDraft.
The Re-Entry Draft:
The Re-Entry Draft is a recent innovation, introduced to MLS in only 2010. However, before I launch into how the Re-Entry Draft works, first a quick overview of how player contracts work in MLS.
In MLS, players are technically contracted to the league and simply loaned to a club. In this respect, MLS acts as almost an employment agency for the players it hosts. For this reason, players cannot be bought off other teams, as no teams own their players; they can only be traded via the league itself as the contracting body. When players sign for a club, they sign for a set amount of years, often with a certain number of optional years where the club and player between them can decide whether to renew the player's term at the club for a further one-year stint. This allows clubs to keep hold of their star players, while also allowing players the freedom to leave their club at the end of each season assuming a certain period of time has been served with the club.
Now, on the Re-Entry Draft - the RED was introduced at the behest of the Players' Union in response to a previous rule where clubs could hold a temporary exclusivity on resigning players who had come to the end of their contracts. Under the terms of the RED, teams are able to pick other teams' players to sign on for the new season, although eligibility rules dictate which players are viable - players under certain ages with only a short period served in the league are not available to be drafted, for example, allowing teams some rights over their players. Players who have not yet reached their first option to renew with their current club are also unavailable to draft.
The RED is a multi-stage draft, and operates in the following way:
Stage 1 - In Stage 1, clubs may pick a player satisfying the conditions for drafting from one of their opponents' squads; they cannot pick their own players. If they pick a player they must extend a contract offer to him. The player is free to reject the contract, though if he does so the club which drafted him retains a period of exclusivity over him.
After Stage 1 there is an interlude, where clubs are free to extend new contract offers or renewals to their own out-of-contract players. They may also trade players to other clubs.
Stage 2 - Stage 2 begins a week after Stage 1. Stage 2 operates much as the previous stage, though clubs are not obliged to immediately make a contract offer, and they may pick their own players (thus gaining exclusivity), though only after those players have been passed over by other clubs. Clubs are then free to spend seven days negotiating with their picks before offering a contract. If a player rejects a contract then they join a pool of players who can be freely drafted by any club, although the club which originally drafted them retains the right of First Option (whereby, if the player if offered a contract by another club, they must first reject one on exactly the same terms from the drafting club).
The RED takes place in mid-December each season, and serves as a nice book-end to the year.
The Expansion Draft:
Now this is the big one for NYCFC. The Expansion Draft is only open for new franchises, as a way of filling their squad quickly. This is done at the expense of the other teams in the league - inevitably, the more teams join, the lesser impact it will have on each club. Thankfully for the established teams, there are some rules on which players can be drafted and which can't. Players can be made ineligible for drafting in a number of ways:
- Each established team is able to select 11 players to be "protected" from drafting.
- Designated Players generally are considered exempt and need not be protected to be kept
- "Homegrown" (i.e. academy product) players who do not form part of the main 20 squad players (under wage cap rules) are automatically exempt
- Designated Generation Adidas players are automatically exempt.
Following each established team specifying their protected players to MLS, the new franchise - or franchises - then select 10 players (each) to draft from the other teams, although to prevent a single club from being gutted by the Draft, a further rule states that if a club sees two of its players drafted to a new franchise, the rest of their "exposed" players are automatically made exempt and their squad is essentially removed from consideration. In cases where two or more sides join MLS in the same season, an order is established between them, and then they alternate picks in that order until each new franchise has drafted ten players.
The Expansion Draft generally takes place in late November, giving new franchises plenty of time to arrange to fill in the rest of the squad spaces.
Drafts are a system used across a wide range of major US sports - though virtually unheard of outside of the USA - for allocating players to a team. As America has far less club involvement in developing young players than in many parts of the globe, and due to the way that contracts with players are technically held by the league itself, not the individual clubs, this has engendered a situation where each club frequently needs to refresh its line-up of "squad players" - those players who are not the club's stars but instead are rising talents making their breakthrough or are journeyman players who are there to fill in gaps in the squad and support the first-choice players. The draft system serves to let every club top up its squad in a simple, practical and cheap way.
So how do they work?
The format of the draft is, in principle, fairly straightforward. Before the draft begins, there will be a pool of players, all known to the clubs involved. Each club is given an equal amount of picks, though clubs are allowed to exercise a "pass" and waive their chance to pick a player - any club which exercises a pass is considered to have concluded business and may not rejoin the player selection later in the draft. A notable exception is the Expansion Draft, which can only be entered by brand new franchises, and which I will return to later.
Obviously, picks can only be made one at a time. That means teams have to be given an order of precedence in their picks. This isn't random - in order to balance up the league to a degree, the teams which performed worst in the previous season are given priority the following season. The order goes:
1) Teams which didn't qualify for the MLS Cup knock-outs the previous season
2) Teams knocked out in the MLS Cup knock-out round
3) Teams knocked out in the MLS Cup conference semi-finals
4) Teams knocked out in the MLS Cup conference finals
5) The MLS Cup runner-up
6) The MLS Cup winner
For tiers 1-4, where there are multiple teams for each tier, teams are ordered by points scored the previous season, with the lowest points always receiving preference.
With the order determined, and possible player picks scouted and reviewed, the teams sit down, wait their turns, and choose one player every round until either all the rounds are finished, or every pickable player has been drafted or rejected, depending on the draft. Those players will then join their new teams for the start of the upcoming season.
But I heard some clubs got two picks in one round last time?
This is true. While the teams are ordered by performance last season, they are allowed to trade their picks with other teams. They can trade them for other picks in the same draft - not necessarily for the same season - picks in other drafts, wage cap allocation money or for other players. Trades can even be conditional, depending on future performance (and therefore, team pick ranking). This means some teams can end up with multiple picks in the same round.
So what are the different drafts, then?
There have been a number of different drafts in the past, though arguably only four are considered "active" now. They are as follows:
The SuperDraft:
This is the big one each season - the one that attracts the most publicity and draws the most excitement from the fans. The SuperDraft technically has four rounds and allows clubs to select a mixture of the top college talents, Generation Adidas professional youths, academy drop-outs and pro players from the USL, though occasionally part of this pick is split off into a Supplemental Draft (see below). This is each club's most notable way of sourcing the very best youngsters to break through into senior football, though in recent years the rise of European-style academies has placed less importance on the SuperDraft compared to developing talent through the club system.
The SuperDraft typically takes place in mid-January, and is the harbinger of the new season.
The Supplemental Draft:
Kid brother to the SuperDraft, the Supplemental Draft is essentially for players who have passed the point of eligibility as a college pick, and usually are already playing for local teams having left their university. The Supplemental Draft exists in parallel with the SuperDraft, being used when MLS chooses to split the college players from those outside the college system, and was in fact not run in 2014, though considering the Supplemental Draft has already been done away with on no fewer than three times in the last twenty seasons, we may well see its return again soon.
In recent years the Supplemental Draft has run over four, or occasionally three, rounds, and when it is run the SuperDraft tends to be shortened to only two rounds. It takes place around a week after the SuperDraft.
The Re-Entry Draft:
The Re-Entry Draft is a recent innovation, introduced to MLS in only 2010. However, before I launch into how the Re-Entry Draft works, first a quick overview of how player contracts work in MLS.
In MLS, players are technically contracted to the league and simply loaned to a club. In this respect, MLS acts as almost an employment agency for the players it hosts. For this reason, players cannot be bought off other teams, as no teams own their players; they can only be traded via the league itself as the contracting body. When players sign for a club, they sign for a set amount of years, often with a certain number of optional years where the club and player between them can decide whether to renew the player's term at the club for a further one-year stint. This allows clubs to keep hold of their star players, while also allowing players the freedom to leave their club at the end of each season assuming a certain period of time has been served with the club.
Now, on the Re-Entry Draft - the RED was introduced at the behest of the Players' Union in response to a previous rule where clubs could hold a temporary exclusivity on resigning players who had come to the end of their contracts. Under the terms of the RED, teams are able to pick other teams' players to sign on for the new season, although eligibility rules dictate which players are viable - players under certain ages with only a short period served in the league are not available to be drafted, for example, allowing teams some rights over their players. Players who have not yet reached their first option to renew with their current club are also unavailable to draft.
The RED is a multi-stage draft, and operates in the following way:
Stage 1 - In Stage 1, clubs may pick a player satisfying the conditions for drafting from one of their opponents' squads; they cannot pick their own players. If they pick a player they must extend a contract offer to him. The player is free to reject the contract, though if he does so the club which drafted him retains a period of exclusivity over him.
After Stage 1 there is an interlude, where clubs are free to extend new contract offers or renewals to their own out-of-contract players. They may also trade players to other clubs.
Stage 2 - Stage 2 begins a week after Stage 1. Stage 2 operates much as the previous stage, though clubs are not obliged to immediately make a contract offer, and they may pick their own players (thus gaining exclusivity), though only after those players have been passed over by other clubs. Clubs are then free to spend seven days negotiating with their picks before offering a contract. If a player rejects a contract then they join a pool of players who can be freely drafted by any club, although the club which originally drafted them retains the right of First Option (whereby, if the player if offered a contract by another club, they must first reject one on exactly the same terms from the drafting club).
The RED takes place in mid-December each season, and serves as a nice book-end to the year.
The Expansion Draft:
Now this is the big one for NYCFC. The Expansion Draft is only open for new franchises, as a way of filling their squad quickly. This is done at the expense of the other teams in the league - inevitably, the more teams join, the lesser impact it will have on each club. Thankfully for the established teams, there are some rules on which players can be drafted and which can't. Players can be made ineligible for drafting in a number of ways:
- Each established team is able to select 11 players to be "protected" from drafting.
- Designated Players generally are considered exempt and need not be protected to be kept
- "Homegrown" (i.e. academy product) players who do not form part of the main 20 squad players (under wage cap rules) are automatically exempt
- Designated Generation Adidas players are automatically exempt.
Following each established team specifying their protected players to MLS, the new franchise - or franchises - then select 10 players (each) to draft from the other teams, although to prevent a single club from being gutted by the Draft, a further rule states that if a club sees two of its players drafted to a new franchise, the rest of their "exposed" players are automatically made exempt and their squad is essentially removed from consideration. In cases where two or more sides join MLS in the same season, an order is established between them, and then they alternate picks in that order until each new franchise has drafted ten players.
The Expansion Draft generally takes place in late November, giving new franchises plenty of time to arrange to fill in the rest of the squad spaces.
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