While many of their MLS counterparts had a busy day at the Baltimore Convention Center, making as many as six selections, the 2008 SuperDraft was a quiet day for the San Jose Earthquakes.
Head coach Frank Yallop and general manager John Doyle made just one pick, taking highly touted Texan Shea Salinas with the first pick of the second round (15th overall). At the moment, the Quakes are anxious to get quick results from their acquisitions and the technical staff believes that the Furman University product can contribute right away
"We were looking for needs," said Doyle. "We need a wide attacking midfielder and Shea fits the bill for that, that's for sure."
Despite the fact that San Jose played host to an MLS club from 1996 to 2005, the Earthquakes' expansion status presents a unique set of pressures both on and off the field and for the time being, immediate contributions take priority over long-term growth.
"We have acquisition money and we want to make sure that we're getting players that can go right into our team, not players that are more developmental players," said the former MLS defender. "We have immediate needs to worry about and not developmental needs to worry about right now. ... It's tough going into it with somebody with no MLS experience."
The Quakes had already traded away the top overall SuperDraft pick to Kansas City in exchange for veteran defender Nick Garcia, and nothing that took place on Friday gave Doyle and Yallop any reason to second-guess that choice.
"For us it's terrific," said Doyle. "You look at the career that he's already had, he's a central defender and we were pretty excited to be able to get him. We didn't think we would. We had a lot of names thrown at us and we actually went to Kansas City and went after him specifically, and we were a little surprised that they let us have him."
The club has also made deals to acquire talented players like speedy striker Kei Kamara and standout goalkeeper Joe Cannon, and Doyle suggested that the club will be active in the international transfer market and may swing further trades within the league in the coming months.
"Kei Kamara is an exciting young player -- I think if he was number one in the draft, we might've taken him," he said. "We like him, so we already picked him up. Ned Grabavoy is a terrific attacking player. Ivan Guerrero is a good attacking player. But I think we're going to look for some more attacking players -- a striker, somebody who can fill up the goal."
Having picked up several other promising additions in the expansion draft, San Jose had little desire to give up any of those assets in light of the relatively unproven crop of youngsters on offer in the SuperDraft.
"We had a lot of teams ask us for the players that we drafted in the expansion draft, and we don't want to trade those guys," said Doyle. "We think we got great value and some excellent players out of that, [who] will contribute to our team over years."
Charles Boehm is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
