MLS SuperDraft 2005!

Today was the MLS SuperDraft 2005, and as promised, complete coverage (a la Dan... meaning just my team) follows. Before I begin, though, let me express my disgust at Salt Lake City's franchise being named Real Salt Lake. This idiotic attempt to tie an MLS franchise to a known Spanish club is just wrong, especially since "Real" in Real Madrid refers to royalty (which Spain has... Utah, not so much). Anyway, so Utah went first today, and picked up Nikolas Besagno, a 16-year-old about whom I know very little. He'd been expected to go early, and he did. Good for him.

The Wizards did some interesting things today. In the morning they stopped live footage on FSW pretty early on, but I did get to see KC pick up Scott Sealy with #11 in the first round, which is fine, we can always use more offense. We traded our #3 pick in the second round for Sasha Victorine, from L.A., who last year started in 25 of his 26 games, for 3 goals and 3 assists (regular season) and got nothing but 2 shots starting in all 3 games in the playoffs. I'm still a little conflicted about this one, I've spent so much time heckling this guy that I might need a little adjustment... I suppose it makes things better that they moved KC to the Eastern Conference, so I guess I'm not supposed to hate L.A. as much now.

Immediately after L.A., we chose Ryan Pore, another forward (click the link inside there for stats up to 2003). I'm sure the news in KC tomorrow will mention that we did not pick up Will John, which is all Bob Luder (that's 2 links) has been writing about in the star (except when he takes time out to misrepresent Igor Simutenkov's stats... but I won't write about that until after I see tomorrow's paper), probably because Luder is out of the loop. John went to Chicago a couple of picks after the second time we passed on him.

We closed out the second round (the Wizards article is wrong) by picking up Christopher Sawyer, a goalie from Notre Dame. I guess with Tony's future uncertain it makes sense. This kid's supposed to be really good, my only concern is how our veteran defense will respond to a rookie (even in the backup role). Finally, we spent pick #47 on John Minagawa-Webster, from Michigan State. He's a midfielder with a funny name, who probably won't play, but I say it's good to get someone at middle in case we lose Klein again (not going to happen! not going to happen!). All in all a good draft day for us, I think we've fixed what was up from last year, and with most of that roster intact, we should have another good year!