VANCOUVER, BC – The silly season is nearly upon us.
Major League Soccer will hold three different drafts in the coming week, officially kicking off what is sure to be a busy offseason for all clubs.
There’s the MLS Expansion Draft, the MLS Waiver Draft, and the MLS Re-Entry Draft. And, of course, we can’t forget about the Dispersal Draft, which was held last month, or the SuperDraft, which is set for January.
They say it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but as you could imagine, it’s also the busiest time of the year for Greg Anderson, the club’s vice president of soccer operations.
“Especially this year, we have to factor in all the different things around option exercise dates, expansion protection, Re-Entry Draft, and then try to do all of that while having the uncertainty around what our environment is going to be like as far as the CBA is concerned,” Anderson told whitecapsfc.com. “It’s been challenging and unlike any other offseason, but still busy and hopefully productive.”
Anderson is responsible for managing a number of different areas on the soccer operations side: including the salary cap, professional and amateur scouting, and all the different MLS rules related to player transactions. The first team, Residency program, and now USL PRO team all fall under his umbrella.
This allows Carl Robinson and his coaching staff to focus their attention first and foremost on coaching, but also on player scouting and recruitment – especially at this time of the year.
“What are the mechanisms? How are we going to fit players into the cap? What are the applicable MLS rules in play? I try to provide them with all the information they need, but the final decision rests with Carl,” Anderson said. “There’s always a lot of going on but we have a lot of good people working behind the scenes that support all of the things that we’re doing.”
Anderson, who was born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, has been with the club since 2004. He was a part of the management team of the ‘Caps teams that won USL First Division titles in 2006 and 2008, he helped get the Residency program off the ground in 2007, and he helped oversee the team’s transition into MLS.
“MLS is a very unique league and has a whole set of rules and networks,” Anderson said. “Tommy Soehn, who had a wealth of experience, was a huge help in making that transition and played a big role in a lot of decisions we made.”
Some of those decisions came to the forefront at the 2010 MLS Expansion Draft, which gave Vancouver and their expansion cousins Portland Timbers an opportunity to select unprotected players from existing MLS clubs. Each MLS team can protect 11 players, in addition to Homegrown and Generation adidas players, and the protected lists are released two days before the draft.
“At this time leading into the draft, it was about trying to project who we thought would be available,” Anderson said. “We wanted to find the balance between taking who we thought would be the most valuable player from a resource perspective versus a player who could help us.”
Anderson called the Expansion Draft a “crazy time” with all the discussions and trade talks leading up to it.
In fact, he said the ‘Caps were discussing a major trade in the moments leading up to the conference call – to the point where the league had to call them to see what was going on.
“We were in such heated trade talks leading up to it, we almost missed the start of the conference call,” Anderson laughed. “Literally, a minute before the draft started the deal died so we made the pick.”
Whitecaps FC ended up selecting Sanna Nyassi with their first pick, before trading him to Colorado Rapids for a long-term international roster slot. They also traded their third-round pick Nathan Sturgis to Toronto FC for a first-round pick in the MLS SuperDraft and made a few other trades, but also selected players like Atiba Harris, Shea Salinas, Joe Cannon, and John Thorrington.
Now, Anderson and the ‘Caps are on the other side of the Expansion Draft, which is being held for New York City FC and Orlando City SC on Wednesday.
“It will be an interesting time for Orlando and New York because once the lists are released on Monday afternoon, they’ll likely be fielding trade calls from teams that are interested in players that will be exposed,” Anderson said. “That’s why when we’re thinking about protection of our players, we can’t just model on who we think Orlando or New York needs … there could be some moving and shaking once the lists are released on Monday.”
On that note, a four-hour trade window is set to open on Monday morning and then again upon conclusion of Wednesday's Expansion Draft.
So how busy does Anderson expect Whitecaps FC to be?
“We’re pretty happy with the roster we have,” Anderson said. “We just know we have to add a few key pieces. I don’t imagine there will be much activity from us around that period, but you never know.”
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