The days where D.C. United would be expected to turn their first round draft pick in today's MLS SuperDraft into a sure starter are long gone. However, for an aging team with some positional needs to be addressed, the #13 pick holds some real value. Several mock drafts have seen United end up with a Generation Adidas player, which in salary cap terms means someone who doesn't count against the team's budget. There has been talk that this year's pool of potential draftees is not that great, but a) we hear that every year and b) United is still selecting early enough to find a player who can fill a role in 2016.
B&RU will be giving you plenty of coverage from the Baltimore Convention center for today's event. We have two members of our staff attending with press passes, more traveling up as fans on various supporters group buses, as well as yours truly winging it with the hoi polloi. We'll have breaking news, tweets, interviews, and maybe even audio. It should be fun.
Draft previews: Here's our rundown of players from each area of the field that United could be interested in, and here's what happened when I got to mock draft for the Black-and-Red. The rest of SB Nation's mock draft is here, while there were also mock drafts from MLSsoccer.com, Soccer by Ives (whose prediction matches mine), and Top Drawer Soccer (who ran both a staff mock and a media mock).
Draft date/time: Thursday 1/14, 1:00pm Eastern
Venue: Baltimore Convention Center (Baltimore, MD)
TV: The first pick will be broadcast on ESPN as part of their Sportscenter broadcast. That's it.
Online: MLSsoccer will be streaming video and commentary right above their draft tracker, or you could just watch the video here:
What are you drinking?: Coffee. It's going to be a cold morning, and glorious Annapolis roaster Ceremony Coffee has opened a location roughly the same distance from the draft as the Stadium-Armory metro station is from Lot 8. That is, of course, assuming I am not running behind schedule. If the latter is true, it'll be whatever I can find between parking and the convention center.
Treat this as our live thread for the entire draft.