Expansion Draft Unprotected Lists Are Out!

By: Laurie | November 20th, 2007

Oh, the excitement! It’s MLS Expansion Draft time!

And here we have the lists of the players each MLS team has chosen not to protect from the greedy, grasping hands of new San Jose coach Frank Yallop. (Yes, that would be the same Frank Yallop who was somehow not able to bring sexy football to the LA Galaxy despite the presence of Beckham. Hence the “relocation” to northern California, where sexy football is apparently not a requirement.)

The expansion draft takes place tomorrow. This is the chance for Frank and his new San Jose Earthquakes, (not to be confused with his old San Jose Earthquakes, who are now Dominic Kinnear’s Houston Dynamo) to snag players from ten of the thirteen current MLS sides.

These are the rules for the 2006 draft according to Wikipedia, (updated with a current date), since I tend to trust Wikipedia more than any sports journalist on the planet. (Plus if I’m wrong I can always say, “Well, you know, it was Wikipedia.”):

Only one player may be selected from each team, and three of the league’s 13
current teams will not have a player selected.

Teams will be allowed to protect 11 players from their 28-man rosters. Generation adidas players are automatically protected, though players who are graduated from the program to the senior roster at the end of the 2007 season are not.

Each team may only leave one senior international player unprotected.

I like Frank Yallop and think he got a raw deal at LA, so I’m really hoping to see him pick up some quality players to start a halfway decent team. And the best part, both for San Jose and MLS, is that there are some quality players on the lists. This means the league is starting to go deeper than eleven good players per team. And that’s a good thing.

If you’re an MLS fan, take a look at the lists and tell me which players you think will soon know the way to San Jose.

As a Galaxy fan, I’m guessing he’ll go with his Canadian discovery, the scrappy, pugilistic card-magnet Kevin Harmse. (Other possibilities: Super sub striker Gavin Glinton or mid-summer revelation midfielder Josh Tudela.) But I could be wrong.