For your amusement: An MLS Weighted Lottery!

the memo say's he's a 'defensive standout'. naaah, that's the last thing we need.

 

Giving their history of developing players (Howard is pretty much the only player they've ever drafted worth a damn, I think we can pretty much rule this kid out of the US' future plans)...

Dave

 

Their is the weight in this lottery, to go with the typical NY/NJ bias.


signed,

Proud Conspiracy Theorist

 

Remember back when DC was good (waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back) and the reason given that DC never won any lotteries was because it was "weighted" so the bad teams could win?

So, now that we're bad....

Oh, I know. Karma is still biting us in the ass for getting Olsen...

RS

 

They will probably sit him behind Joe Addo so who really cares.

 

We probably won the lottery which forced the Scum to take him.

Sachin

 

Hey if we "win" the lottery for Yi sometime soon, who cares?

[sarcasm]
Yeah, that'll happen.
[/sarcasm]

 

Faria? Petke? Brad Davis? Or should we have picked Doody Kante in this year's draft, instead of Jeff Moore, who plays every game.

I wonder if the Metros would be running Convey's career into the ground.

 

Who is runs this lottery ... Al Capone?

I'm still peeved that we didn't win the rights to DJ Countess, who would have fit right into DC United as the starting keeper at the time. I'm not dissing Rimando, but at the time we didn't have Rimando, and Ammann isn't my idea of a great keeper.

Heh, well there are a lot of youngsters that may be entering the SuperDraft, and Alex Yi may be one of them. If he enters a lottery though, I'm 99.999% certain that the only drama will be whether the winner is LA or San Jose.

He'd be an attendance booster at either place, and LA is second only to NY in terms of the league's desire to boost attendance, but putting him in the Bay Area could possibly ressucitate a faltering San Jose market.

-Tron

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these "weighted" lotteries based on a teams W-L or pts accumulated record over a certain time frame from 1-3 years based on who MLS needs to win it?

Ok, so no matter which way they try to configure it, aren't we the worst team?
This smells of total crap if you ask me. And I don't want the league to tell us we won it and passed, that would be utter crap too. NO team would pass, they'd hold the player to ransom to the highest bidder, which for Akwari should be at least a 1st round pick.

Didn't the Metros "win" the lottery for Countess too? Shouldn't they have to sit this one out?

This is complete crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

MLS needs to do like the NBA did and allow journalists in to watch the drawing for the lottery.

This is a load of crap. The Metros are hurting for a defender, couldn't land Tony Adams, Balboa has been hurt and the league rigs it again!

And the league wonders why people don't take them seriously, and they pull this junk.

end rant.

 

It's an equation based on last year's standings, this years standings, goals for and against, and various other random stats kept at MLSHQ, until the Metrodonkeys come out on top.

It's a very grueling process to come up with a formula out of thin air that makes the NY/NJ/NV franchise come out on top.

 

Re: Who is runs this lottery ... Al Capone?

Not to derail this thread, but I don't see how Yi helps boost attendance one person in SJ. To suggest Alex Yi as a solution to low attendance in SJ is actually quite funny.

 

Of course it's crap. Just another reason to hate the Muttropukes. But it's also so far from surprising it's laughable. All I wonder is why MLS still bothers with the pretense of claiming to have had a lottery?

 

First, I tend to agree with Sandon's rather lukewarm assessment of Akwari's potential on the MLS N7A thread on this topic. We already have a good defense so the kid wouldn't play much with us. We also have four developmental players- Q1, Q2, The Cartographer, and the New Kid, Namoff. Thus if we had picked him we would have had to drop one of the four and I see no reason to do that.

In fact I wonder if we passed on him; I wouldn't be suprised.

 

Oddly, we had just waived developmental player and moved Namoff to developmental status and loaned him to Richmond.

It seems we would have had a developmental spot for this guy.

Maybe they did it on actual weight...in pounds, or something.

No wait, the teams with Meola would have an edge and if they used coaches LA with Sigi has everybody eaten...um...I mean beat.

 

Skip, even if we don't have room for him, wouldn't it make sense to take him and trade him?
How many teams in MLS would love to get their hands on a roster exempt, U17 Nats defender?
Metros, Columbus, LA sure would.
I'm pretty sure between the three we could have gotten a 1st round pick out of the deal.

If we passed, we just turned down either a free player or a free draft pick and it would be yet another in a long line of boneheaded moves by DC front office.
Hopefully Goff on Ed will be able to shed some light on the situation later in the day.

 

Yeah, you may very well be right. Makes sense to me. And as you and Lowe say it would be nice to know how the draft actually worked. Just to look at it from NE's perspective (and I'd figure that they would also have a greta chance in a lottery too) I couldn't imagine them passing Akwari with their defense. Hopefully Goff, Ed, or Diceson can shed some light.

 

I find this odd too and I wonder if this is conected somehow. (What follows is even more speculative than is usual, so watch out):

I can imagine that MLS is very aware of the talent in our Nats youth teams and that they are in some sort of contact with all of the regulars in the youth pipeline. MLS doesn't want to beaten out by the likes of Bayer Leverkusen again if they can help it.

I would guess that all MLS teams knew by last week that Akwari was gonna sign soon, and that DCU knew about it at the time of the Ludwig/Namoff manoeuvers. I mean, the negotiations take some days at least and setting up the lottery would take a day or two after the signing became immenent. So I conclude that we knew we weren't gonna get him by last week.

As I recall, if a team gets a player by lottery, they aren't elligible for any other lottery for the rest of that year. So if a team, take DCU, knew that another, more desirable player was heading towards a lottery, say some tasty forward who would take a regular roster spot (Namoff's old spot) than we'd pass on Akwari since DCU figures that even if it won the Akwari lottery and then traded him right away they wouldn't get what they wanted in the trade as compared to what the lottery will offer next.


Again I am doing a lot of arm waving here. Just spending time till work.

 

That would require Mr. Garber to treat us like fans or even people not the mushrooms he thinks we are.

 

Okay, I want to speculate even further.

Say you are Alecko Escadarian (yeah you can't spell your own last name...) You are highly regarded as one of THE youth strikers. You are thinking of your future and you look to your peers for guidance. They say a bunch of things to ponder:

-They are saying that college doesn't really help your career. Besides you don't make any money there and if you stay there much longer you can kiss Germany'06 good-bye.

-Your boy Taylor Twellman (who you think you compare well too) says that Germany sucked big time (and so does LD) and that even playing on the Revs is great in comparison even for 24K. Taylor figures that his contract will get rewritten after this year anyway after his year.

-You've had some Euro nibbles but not enough for a leap. Coner Casey and Steve Cherundolo had a college coach with good Eiuro ties, but you don't.

-Besides UVa just isn't that compelling anymore. Not after Toulon or Argentina.

So you talk to MLS. They offer you a developmental contract. You figure that you are worth more. Developmental contracts are for signing teenagers like Convey and Q1. Your resume at this point is much better than what they had when they signed. You know you aren't gonna get a lot but you want some decent wage. As a barganing tool you tell MLS you are looking overseas. MLS takes this seriously; after all they were burned on Coner Casey who's doing quite well (and who you think you are better than). They don't want to lose another hot youth striker. They don't want this to become a habit, players going abroad. So MLS says we'll deal. You'll get, oh 35-50K. Not great but it's a start. No, you don't get to pick your team- you'll go into a lottery.

You agree.

Now say you are Kaspar and Hudson. You (and all the other MLS teams) know about these negotiations. I mean it's a small soccer world in the US and besides Garber has no need to keep teams in the dark about how MLS is doing with signing hot youth players. (Probably anyone of us posters here could find out how the future is lining up for the US youth players if we wanted to take the time, IMO, but I digress.) You (Kaspar and Hudson) also know that Nelsen Akwari is about to sign too, but you really aren't interested in him since he's a defender (your defense is fine) and his rep at the moment isn't the best.

So Akwari signs first, meaning his lottery is imminent, but you know Eskadarian is about to sign too and with United's offensive mess; he's the guy you want. Since that is true, you pass on the Akwari lottery since if you get him you can't go for the guy you want.

But it's trickier than that. Akwari signed as a developmental player, but you hear from Garber that Escadarian requires a regular roster spot with, oh, 40K in cap space. Many teams don't have that space and don't want to make room either, but you want him. He doesn't look like another Albright and he's obviously better than Curtis. If you get him than you feel that you have a decent forward line of Moreno, Q1, Q2, and Escadarian. You know that no matter how much you want to revamp things in the offseason there's only so much cap space that you'll have to work with and Escadarian looks like great value to you.

So you have to fiddle with your roster. After looking at your options, you cut Ludwig and move Namoff into Ludwig's developmental spot, which also frees up the money and the roster space you need to be eligible for Escadarian. You pass on Akwari....


Is this creative (read: wacko) enough?

 

ursula's post might have hit the nail straight on the head. I hope so at least, it's about time we got some more UVA guys in here.

 

ursula,

First, I think you're giving Kasper and Hudson way too much credit if you think they'd come up with a scheme like that.

Second, the fact that it's a lottery makes it questionable that even if they did come up with such a convoluted scheme that a player would end up in DC.

My guess is they made the roster moves on the hopes that they could sign an SI for a tryout this season. MLS will come up with some sort of new loan rule allowing DC to grab someone for a few games without needing a discovery. Probably this will happen once DC is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

 

Whatever, NY will get Eskadarian as well.