In professional soccer, building rosters is no easy task. General Managers are always looking for young talent to help their club. Fortunately, MLS has the SuperDraft to assist with this venture while also keeping competitive balance throughout the league.
Similar to the National Football League’s draft, the MLS SuperDraft is an annual offseason draft. Held in January, clubs have four rounds to draft college athletes or players who have signed with the league.
The SuperDraft selection order is relatively simple. Teams that don’t make the playoffs make up the first portion of the order with the club that collected the fewest regular season points selecting first overall. Clubs that make the MLS Cup Playoffscontinue the draft order by fewest regular season points in the round they were eliminated in. The MLS Cup runner up, followed by the MLS Cup Champion are the final teams to select in the SuperDraft. This process repeats for three more rounds, but the order is often shaken up due to trades.
MLS SuperDrafts that include expansion teams will follow a different order, with the expansion team(s) selecting first followed by teams drafting in order of the regular SuperDraft ranking format.
Despite many attempts, players from Canadian universities are not eligible for selection in the MLS SuperDraft.
